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Garvie, Alfred Ernest, 1861 
GBS ke aye 

A handbook of Christian 


A HANDBOOK OF 
CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS 


BY 


ALFRED ERNEST GARVIE 
M.A. (OXON.), D.D. (GLAS. ) 


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PRINCIPAL OF NEW COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON ® oy \ iF PAGES 
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AUTHOR OF ‘THE RITSCHLIAN THEOLOGY,’ ‘STUDIES IN THE INNER 
LIFE OF JESUS,’ ‘THE CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY A Nn 
THE MODERN PERPLEXITY,’ ‘STUDIES OF 

PAUL AND HIS GOSPEL,’ ETC. 


PEC 13 1913 
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NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
1913 


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P ee aay, 
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TO 


THE SACRED MEMORY OF 


EDWARD CAIRD, LL.D. 


PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN GLASGOW UNIVERSITY 
AND MASTER OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD 


This volume is dedicated in token 
of gratitude and reverence by one 
of his students who, although led 
to abandon his philosophy, yet 
cherishes his teaching as a most 
precious possession. 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https://archive.org/details/handbookofchristO0Ogarv_0 


PREFACE 


In the preparation of this volume the writer has aimed at 
justifying the title by as complete an outline of the argu- 
ment for the Christian faith as the intellectual situation of to- 
day demands. This has necessitated the omission of minute 
discussion of many of the topics. For the general character 
of the treatment compensation has been offered in two ways: 
by reference to other volumes in this series dealing with 
some of the subjects, or to other relevant writings, and 
by indicating when the writer himself has dealt with the 
subject at greater length. The order of the chapters has 
been determined with the view of exhibiting as far as 
possible a continuous argument. In accordance with his 
idea of the task of Apologetics as commendation rather 
than defence, less attention has been given to meeting 
objections than to presenting the attractiveness of the 
Christian Gospel. The writer has not hesitated in stating 
conclusions reached by himself after much study and 
thought, in the hope that they will be as helpful to others 
as to himself. No attempt has been, or could be, made to 
indicate in every instance the source of arguments and 
suggestions offered, as for the writer many have become 
part of his own mental stock. He gladly acknowledges a 
far greater debt to other writers than his express references 
can indicate. The bibliography, too, makes no pretence 
to be exhaustive. It is confined to the books known to 
the writer which he has found helpful, and which from 


personal knowledge he can commend to others. While 
vii 


vii A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS 


due prominence has throughout been given to Christian 
experience as the basis of Christian certainty, a lesson 
which the writer has learned from his study of Ritschl, he 
has endeavoured to recognise the just rights of reason, and 
so to be true to the influence of the great teacher, to whose 
memory this book is dedicated. 


New CoLueece, 
Lonpon, 5th November 1912. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER I 


INTRODUCTORY : THE PURPOSE AND THE PROBLEMS ° 


(1) Derivation and meaning of the word; (2) Historical survey ; 
(3) Definition of the purpose; (4) The relation of Apologetics 
to Dogmatics; (5) Relation to Science and Philosophy, and to 
Criticism and the comparative study of Religion, and the 
resulting Problems. 


CHAPTER II 


RELIGION AND REVELATION e ° ° ° ® 2 


I, Reticion—(1) The Universality and Necessity of Religion ; 
(2) The Unity of the Religious Consciousness ; (3) The descrip- 
tion of Religion, its factors and phases; (4) The value of 
Religion ; (5) The validity of Religion; (6) The connection of 
Religion and History ; (7) Religion and Revelation. 

I. RevELATION—(1) The reality of Revelation ; (2) Its permanence 
and universality; (3) The claim for a special Revelation ; 
(4) The religious-historical method ; (5) The value-judgments of 
Religion. 


CHAPTER III 


INSPIRATION AND MIRACLE ° . ° ° ® 


I. THe NaTuRAL AND THE SUPERNATURAL GENERALLY— 
(1) Summary and Transition; (2) The simplest conception of 
Divine Power ; (8) The origin of the idea of the Supernatural ; 
(4) The justification of the idea; (5) The two spheres of 
supernatural Divine Power, Nature and Man. 

II, THE Docrrine or InsPIRATION—(1) Inspiration as Religious 
Emotion ; (2) The Prophetic Inspiration ; (3) The Christian’s 
Inspiration ; (4) The Apostolic Inspiration ; (5) The Inspiration 
of the Bible. 


ix 


PAGE 


21 


51 


x 


A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS 


" TIL THe DOcTRINE OF MIRACLE—(1) Miracle in the Old Testament ; 


THE 


I. 


Il. 


III. 


LY? 


THE CHRISTIAN SALVATION ° . ° ° ° ° es 
I, 


II. 


III. 


(2) The relation of the Miracles of Jesus to His Person, Mission, 
and Message ; (3) The trustworthiness of the records; (4) The 
credibility of Miracle ; (5) Other New Testament Miracles. 


CHAPTER IV 


LORD JESUS CHRIST. ° . . ° ° e e 


THE DENIAL OF THE EXISTENCE OF JESUS—(1) The problem 
stated ; (2) The disproof of the negative criticism; (3) The 
speculative reconstructions untenable. 

THE ESCHATOLOGICAL VIEW OF THE TEACHING OF JESUS— 
(1) The history and content of the view ; (2) The place of the 
Kingdom of God in the teaching of Jesus; (3) The objections 
to the view. 

THE ANTI-SUPERNATURAL VIEW OF THE PERSON OF JESUS— 
(1) Harnack’s position on Miracles and Metaphysics; (2) 
Thompson's view of a non-miraculous Divine Incarnation ; 
(3) The proofs of the supernaturalness of Jesus. 

THE REJECTION OF THE JOHANNINE REPRESENTATION OF JESUS 
—(1) The metaphysical problem involved; (2) The trust- 
worthiness of the Fourth Gospel; (8) The peculiarities of the 
Fourth Gospel ; (4) The testimony to the Divinity of Jesus. 


CHAPTER V 


THE CONCEPTIONS INVOLVED—(1) The truth of Christ’s person 
and the worth of His work; (2) Religion as redemptive and 
perfective ; (3) The depreciation of man’s sense of sin ; (4) The 
denial of God’s judgment on sin; (5) The religious conscious- 
ness reinforcing the moral conscience; (6) The nature of 
forgiveness as restored fellowship of God and Man; (7) The 
meaning and aim of Sacrifice; (8) The death of Christ as an 
Atoning Sacrifice; (9) The relation of the doctrine and the 
experience of Salvation. 

THE CONTENT OF THE CHRISTIAN SALVATION—(1) Deliverance 
from the desire for, and anxiety about, natural goods; (2) The 
forgiveness of sin ; (3) The solution of the moral and religious 
problems ; (4) The efficacy of the sacrifice of Jesus in moral and 
religious change; (5) The fellowship of the living Christ; 
(6) The power of the Spirit ; (7) The hope of Immortality. 

THR PRESENT APPEAL OF CHRISTIAN SaLvaTION—(1) The 
Apostolic Gospel and the Gospels ; (2) The types of Christian 
experience, 


PAGE 


82 


114 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER VI 


THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF GOD. Suis ih 


I, THE PERSONALITY OF GOD—(1) Religion and Theology; (2) The 
Conception defined ; (3) Objections to the Conception. 

Il, Tok PERFECTION OF GoD—(1) Christian Meliorism, not 
Pessimism or Optimism; (2) The problem of physical evil; 
(3) The problem of moral evil; (4) The practical solution the 
condition of the theoretical. 

III. Tue Tri-Unity oF GoD—(1) The reasons for the Divine Incarna- 
tion ; (2) The experience of the Holy Spirit ; (3) The religious 
interest of the Doctrine of the Trinity; (4) The terms of 
definition, 


CHAPTER VII 


THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF MAN . 


I, THE CONCEPTION OF HUMAN PERSONALITY—(1) Some character- . 


istics of Human Personality; (2) The question of Human 
Liberty ; (3) The hope of Immortality. 

II, THE CHRISTIAN EMPHASIS ON HuMAN SIN—(1) The reality and 
the universality of sin; (2) The explanations of the origin of 
sin ; (8) The deliverance from sin offered by grace. 

III, THE RECOVERY FROM SIN BY GRACcE—(1) The growth of the 
Christian life; (2) The reality of the Christian experience ; 
(3) The practical test legitimate. 


CHAPTER VIII 


THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL . 


I. THE NaTURE OF CHRISTIAN Moratity—(1) The relation of 
Christian Religion and Morality ; (2) The errors of Quietism and 
Mysticism ; (3) No casuistry in Christian Morality; (4) The 
sources of the Christian Ideal. 

II. THE MODERN CHALLENGE OF THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL—(1) The 

teaching of Jesus as penitential discipline and interim ethic; 

(2) The pollution of Morality by religious sanctions, and ‘other 

worldliness’; (3) Christian Morality as servile (Nietzsche) ; 

(4) Christian Morality as anarchic (Tolstoy) ; (5) The Ideal as 
individualist or socialist ; (6) The Ideal as ascetic. 

III, THE REALISATION OF THE CHRISTIAN IDEaAL—(1) Christianity 


spirit and not letter; (2) The Christian Ideal for Christians, 
not the world. 


162 


186 


xii 


THE 


II. 


IIl. 


A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS 


CHAPTER IX 


CHRISTIAN HOPE ° . . . . . ° . 


. THE CONTENT OF THE CHRISTIAN Hops—(1) The early 


Christian eschatology ; (2) The relation of this eschatology to 
the Christian Hope; (8) The definition of the Christian Hope ; 
(4) The Hope as individual and universal. 

THE REASONS FOR THE UNIVERSAL CHRISTIAN HopE—(1) The 
experience of the past; (2) The unity of mankind; (8) The 
universalism of Christianity; (4) The possibility of a rapid 
development. 

Tur REASONS FOR THE INDIVIDUAL CHRISTIAN HorE—(1) The 
reasons for Christian Faith; (2) The reasons for the Human 
Reason or Conscience; (8) The objections to the Christian Hope ; 
(4) The relation of the Individual and the Universal aspect of 
the Christian Hope ; (5) Argument and Experience. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY ° e a e e ° e e « 


INDEX e e 6 e © e e e bd * *® 


PAGE 


211 


237 


a 


A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN 
APOLOGETICS 


CHAPTER I 
INTRODUCTORY 


The Purpose and the Problems 


(1) THe Greek word droXoyia (aré and Adyos) means a 
speech in defence ; it may be of a fact as true, or againsta”~ * 
charge as false. The phrase droAoyeiobar Siknvy Oavarod * 
means to speak against the sentence of death being passed.. ’, 
In the Apology Plato gives the defence of Socrates against * 
the charges which led to his death. Turning to the use of 
the word in the New Testament, we find Festus declaring 
‘that it is not the custom of the Romans to give up any , 
man before that the accused have the accusers face to 
face, and have had opportunity to make his defence 
(apology) concerning the matter laid against him’ (Acts 
xxv. 16). Paul uses the word of ‘the clearing of them- °* 
selves’ by the Corinthians (2 Cor. vii. 11). He addresses 
the Philippians as partakers with him of grace in ‘ bonds 
and in the defence (apology) and confirmation of the 
Gospel’ (Phil. i. 7). The writers who, in the second ande* 
third centuries, defended Christianity against the argu- 
ments and calumnies of Judaism and Paganism are usually 
described as the Avpologists. One of these, Tertullian, 
entitled his work the Apologeticus or Apologeticum. The 
word Apologetic is used as an adjective in English first of 
all in the title of a book in 1649, ‘ An Apologetic Declaratiofi 

of the conscientious Presbyterians of the Province of 

| A 


2 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS _ [ca. 


London,’ and as a noun in Bacon’s Advancement of Learn- 
ing, but spelt Apologetique. The first use of the plural 
form for ‘the defensive method of argument’ is found in 
North’s Lives about 1733, ‘to drop these apologetics.’ 
The first use in the strictly technical sense of ‘ the argu- 
mentative defence of Christianity,’ seems to be found in the 
Penny Cyclopedia in 1834. ‘The science of apologetics 
was unknown till the attacks of the adversaries of 
Christianity assumed a learned and scientific character.’ 
In the same sense the singular form of the word occurs 
in the Atheneum, 1882: ‘The kind of book . . . most 
rational of all in the way of Christian apologetic.’ ! 
Whether in the plural or the singular form it seems desir- 
able to treat the word as a collective singular, just as we 
treat mathematics, ethics, or esthetics; and in the follow- 
ing pages the writer will use the corresponding verb or 
‘pronoun in the singular, even when the plural form of the 
word may be employed. It need hardly be added that 
the less reputable use of apology in the sense of an excuse, 
more or less invalid, or of apologetic as describing an un- 
dignified or even servile manner, is quite irrelevant to the 
meaning of the word Apologetics. 

(2) Before attempting more closely to define the purposeof 
Apologetics, a brief historical survey of the more prominent 
writings in this class of Christian literature may be given. 

(i) First of all comes the New Testament. That it bears 
this character has been very ably and thoroughly shown 
in a recent book, Scott’s The Apologetic of the New Testa- 
ment. ‘From the beginning,’ he says, ‘ our religion had 
been called on to defend itself against misunderstandings 
and bitter opposition. Our Lord Himself is aware that 
His legacy to His followers will not be peace, but a sword, 
and the strife which He anticipated began with the very 
moment of His death. His disciples were thrown from the 
first into conflict with their own countrymen. The Gentile 
mission involved them in a further conflict with the Pagan 


1 See Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon; Thayer’s Greek-English — 


Lexicon of the New Testament, and Murray's English Dictionary, i, 


¢ 


1] INTRODUCTORY 3 


world, to which their message proved strange and unin- 
telligible. At every step of its progress Christianity was 
exposed to some fresh antagonism, and could only main- 
tain itself by an unceasing struggle. Our New Testament 
came into being in the process of this struggle which is 
everywhere reflected in it. Paul and his fellow apostles 
are always conscious that they stand for a religion which 
is spoken against, and one chief purpose of their writing is 
to vindicate the gospel in view of the attacks. It may be 
accepted as one of the most certain results of modern 
criticism, that the New Testament is permeated with an} 
apologetic interest, which is often strongest when it is 
least apparent.?1 To give only a few instances, the 
Synoptic Gospels defend the Messiahship of Jesus, and 
the Fourth Gospel seeks to prove Him the Incarnate Logos 
as Life and Light to men. The Acts of the Apostles seeks 
to show that Christianity is a religion deserving toleration 
in the Roman Empire. The Epistle to the Romans vindi- 
cates Paul’s gospel. The Epistle to the Hebrews demon- 
strates the superiority of Christianity to Judaism as a 
reason against apostasy. 

(ii) Mention has already been made of the Apologists, 
and a few sentences descriptive of their labours may be 
quoted. ‘The Christians,’ says Schaff, ‘ were indeed from 
the first ‘‘ ready always to give an answer to every man that 
asked them a reason of the hope that was in them.” But 
when heathenism took the field against them, not only 
with fire and sword, but with argument and slander besides, 
they had to add to their simple practical testimony a theo- 
retical self-defence. . . . The apologetic literature began to 
appear under the reign of Hadrian, and continued to grow 


till the end of our period (A.D. 311). Most of the church ~~ 


teachers took part in this labour of their day. . . . Here at 
once appears the characteristic difference between the ) 
Greek and the Latin minds. The Greek apologies are more’ 
learned and philosophical, the Latin more practical and | 
juridical in their matter and style. The former labour to | 


1 Pp. 2-3, 


4 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [cH. 


prove the truth of Christianity and its adaptedness to the 
intellectual wants of man; the latter plead for its legal 
right to exist, and exhibit mainly its moral excellency and 
salutary effect upon society. The Latin also are in general 
more rigidly opposed to heathenism, while the Greeks 
recognise in the Grecian philosophy a certain affinity to the 
Christian religion.”1 One of the earliest and also finest 
examples of this class of literature is the Lpistle to Diog- 
netus, the authorship of which is altogether unknown. ‘It 
is,’ says Schaff, ‘a brief but masterly vindication of Christian 
life and doctrine from actual experience. It is evidently 
the product of a man of genius, fine taste, and classical 
culture. It excels in fresh enthusiasm of faith, richness of 
thought, and elegance of style, and is altogether one of the 
most beautiful memorials of Christian antiquity, unsur- 
passed and hardly equalled by any genuine work of the 
Apostolic Fathers.’ Among the most notable of the 
Greek apologies, which we possess complete, are the works 
_ of Justin, who died in 166. His first or larger Apology, 
and his second or smaller Apology, ‘are both a defence of 
the Christians and their religion against heathen calumnies 
and persecutions. He demands nothing but justice for his 
brethren, who were condemned without trial, simply as 
Christians and suspected criminals.’ ‘His Dialogue is a 
vindication of Christianity from Moses and the prophets 
against the objections of the Jews.’ ? Minucins Felix, a 
convert, ‘who brought the rich stores of classical culture 
to the service of Christianity,’ and who ‘shares with 
Lactantius the honour of being the Christian Cicero,’ wrote 
‘an apology of Christianity in the form of a dialogue under 
the title Octavius.’ ‘It gives us a lively idea of the great 
controversy between the old and the new religion among 
the higher and the cultivated classes of Roman society, and 
allows fair play and full force to the arguments on both sides. 
It is an able and eloquent defence of monotheism against 
polytheism, and of Christian morality against heathen 


1 Ante-Nicene Christianity, vol. i. pp. 105-6. 
2 Jbid., ii. p. 701. 3 Pp. 716-17. 


1] INTRODUCTORY 5 


immorality. But this is about all. The exposition of the 
truths of Christianity is meagre, superficial, and defective.’ 1 
The last sentence indicates a not uncommon fault in some 
of these writings—a greater mastery of the philosophy 
abandoned than of the faith accepted. 

(iii) One of the classical works in Christian literature is 
Augustine’s City of God. In the days when Rome was 
tottering to her fall, many minds were turning from the 
new faith to the old, and arguing that Paganism might 
have preserved what Christianity was destroying. 
* Augustine,’ says Fairbairn, ‘ stood forward to defend the 
Faith so gravely assailed. His apology was twofold, con- 
cerned at once fact and idea. As to the matter of fact, 
Rome, he pleaded, was dying of her pagan vices,’ and ‘ the 
Rome that had died of Paganism, Christ was doing His 


best to save. But it was the matter of ideal principle 


that moved Augustine to grandest eloquence and argument.’ 
To the earthly city of Rome he opposed the heavenly city 
of the Christian Church. ‘The city of Rome ruled the 
bodies and died through the vices of its people; but this 
city rules the spirits and lives through the virtues of its 
citizens, the saints of God.’ 2 

(iv) During the centuries after the fall of Rome, when 


Christianity, having become dominant, was subjecting to 


Christian culture and civilisation the new nations which 
rose upon Rome’s ruins, apologetic literature was not 
called for. In the tenth and eleventh centuries a revival 
of religion was accompanied by an intellectual awakening, 
and men were trying to understand by reason what on 
the authority of the Church they had accepted by faith. 
A leader in this movement was Anselm, who combined 
with a profoundly religious spirit ‘a confidence in the 
power and validity of human thought which lends an 
extraordinary boldness to much of his speculation.’ While 
he confesses as his guiding principle, Credo ut intelligam, — 
and subordinates human reason to ecclesiastical authority, 


1 Ante- Nicene Christianity, ii. pp. 835-8, 
2 Fairbairn’s The Oity of God, pp. 350-2. 


6 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS [ 


yet he holds that dogma is rational. His Monologi 
‘attempts, putting aside all Scripture authority, 
prove the being of God in the light of pure reason, and then 
to define His nature and attributes, His relation to the 
world and men.’ In a second work, the Proslogium, he 
advances the ontological argument for the existence of 
God, about which there has since been so much discussion." 

(v) At the Reformation there arose the necessity for 


defending the doctrines advanced by Luther and other ~ 


reformers. Melanchthon was the author of the Augsburg 
Confession, ‘the authoritative exposition of the Lutheran 
theology,’ and also of ‘the copious Apology for the Con- 
fession.’ 2 Calvin’s Christiane fReligionis Institutio is 
avowedly apologetic in intention. ‘ He says in his preface 
that he wrote the book with two distinct purposes. He 
meant it to prepare and qualify students of theology for 
reading the Divine Word, that they may have an easy 
introduction to it, and be able to proceed in it without 
obstruction. He also meant it to be a vindication of the 
teaching of the Reformers against the calumnies of their 
enemies, who had urged the King of France to persecute 
them and drive them from France.’? As it was a defence of 
a particular kind of doctrine which was being offered, the 
dogmatic could be combined with the apologetic method, 
although generally it is desirable to distinguish and separate 
them. | 

(vi) The greater liberty and activity of mind within 
Christendom since the Renaissance and the Reformation 
have involved more numerous and thorough attacks on 
Christian truth, and have, therefore, necessitated a more ~ 
constant and varied defence. But for the present purpose, — 
to illustrate what the task of Apologetic has been conceived 
to be, only two works need be mentioned, Butler’s Analogy 
(1736) and Paley’s Natural Theology (1803). Butler does 
not attempt a complete defence of the Christian faith. ‘I 


1 See Welch’s Anselm and His Work, chap. iv. 
2 Fisher’s History of Christian Doctrine, p. 273. 
8 LLindsay’s History of the Reformation, ii. p. 99. 


So INTRODUCTORY 7 


desire it may be considered, that in this treatise I have 
argued upon the principles of others, not my own; and 
I have omitted what I think true and of the utmost import- 
ance, because by others thought unintelligible, or not true.’ 
Deism opposed to Christianity a natural religion, all addi-: 
tions to which were declared to be injurious accretions. 
In his Analogy Butler goes out to meet the foes in their 
own field, whereas in his Sermons (1726) he states his own 
position, a theism based on the testimony of conscience. 
‘It was characteristic, says Fairbairn, ‘that Butler’s 
Analogy was more esteemed than his Sermons on Human 
Nature; an argument that proved natural religion, which 
yet never was a religion of nature, to be more heavily 
burdened by intellectual and moral difficulties, when 
taken by itself, than when completed and crowned by 
revealed, was much better adapted to the age than one 
built on the supremacy of conscience. The latter was so 
little considered that its fundamental inconsistency with 
the doctrine of probability on which the Analogy is based 
was never perceived.’! All Butler aimed at was to show 
that even on the principles accepted by his opponents, 
Christianity could claim greater probability as a solution 
of moral and religious problems than could natural religion. 
The limitation of his aim must be regarded in the valua- 
tion of his work, which displays what we shall soon see 
to be a necessary feature of apologetic literature, a close 
adaptation to the intellectual situation. Paley has in 
recent years been much disparaged, but he must be 
judged, not from the standpoint of the knowledge of 
to-day, but of his own time. He satisfied its intellectual 
necessities, as he expressed its mental tendencies. ‘ For 
Theism,’ says Fairbairn, ‘the argument from design was 
in the ascendant; adaptation was as charmed a word 
then as evolution is now; everything was judged by its 
fitness for its end—the more perfect the contrivance the 
more irrefragable the evidence. Design was discovered 
in the organs of sense, in the hand of man, in the relation 


1 Fairbairn’s Christ in Modern Theology, p. 11. 


8 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS _ [cu. 


between the functions of digestion and the chemistry of 
food, in all the adaptations of man to nature and nature 
to man.’? It is on this argument Paley ‘ mostly relies, 
and he manipulates his material with consummate skill,’ 
drawing on ‘all the sciences of his day,’ and seemingly 
willing to use whatever contemporary thought offered 
him.? 

(vii) During the last century there was an enormous 
expansion of human knowledge, a profound modification 
of human thought; and that is the sole reason why 
Butler and Paley seem to us to be so inadequate to the 
apologetic task. No work dealing with the contemporary 
situation has as yet acquired the same reputation as these 
books had in their own day. A vindication of religious 
experience, even in somewhat abnormal forms, has been 
offered in James’s Varieties of Religious Experience. An 
argument for the value of religion as a potent factor in 
Social Evolution has been developed by Benjamin Kidd. 
Balfour in his Foundations of Belief, however unsatisfactory 
his construction, has in his criticism most effectively 
exposed the pretensions of naturalism. One can hardly 
estimate too highly the value of Ward’s two series of 
Gifford Lectures, Naturalism and Agnosticism and the 
Realm of Ends, as a defence of theism against opposing 
scientific and philosophical tendencies of to-day. The 
writer is constrained as a tribute of affection and gratitude 
to mention the work of his two honoured teachers, Edward 
Caird and Andrew M. Fairbairn. The former has from the 
Hegelian standpoint described T'he Evolution of Religion, 
and the latter has very fully and thoroughly expounded The 
Philosophy of the Christian Religion. Bruce endeavoured | 
to cover the whole field, philosophical, historical, critical, in 
his book on Apologetics ; and, in essaying so wide a task, 
exposed his limitations as well as displayed his excellences.? 


1 Fairbairn’s Christ in Modern Theology, p. 11. 

2 Caldecott’s The Philosophy of Religion, p. 180. 

8 For other modern works the bibliography at the end of this volume may 
be consulted. 


i> 


he - INTRODUCTORY 9 


(3) In the sub-title of his book, Bruce has described 
Apologetics as Christianity defensively stated. 

(i) He quotes Ebrard’s Apologetik, i. 3, to show the 
distinction between an Apology and Apologetics, and the 
quotation is significant enough for our purpose to be 
repeated in full. ‘Apologetic differs from simple apology 
by method based on a distinct principle. There are 
apologies which consist of replies to definite attacks on 
Christianity, and allow their method to be determined by 
these. Such, e.g., were the two apologies of Justin Martyr, 
which deal with a series of single attacks, and are excellent 
as apologies, though very insufficient as apologetic. 
Christian apologetic differs from apology in this that, 
instead of allowing its course to be fixed by the accidental 
assaults made at a particular time, it deduces the method 
of defence and the defence itself out of the essence of 
Christianity. Every apologetic is apology, but not every 
apology is apologetic. Apologetic is that science which, 
from the essence of Christianity itself, determines what 
kinds of attack are possible, what sides of Christian truth 
are open to attack, and what false principles lie at the 
foundation of all attacks actual or possible.’ 

(ii) Bruce himself declines to tread this high ‘a priori’ 
way, he prefers the more lowly ‘a posteriori’ path; 
instead of trying to deduce from the essence of Christi- 
anity what attacks are possible and what defences necessary, 
he prefers by the method of historical induction to learn 
‘both the sources of attack and the laws of defence.’1 His 
own intention he clearly expresses in his preface to his 
book: ‘It is an apologetic presentation of the Christian 
faith with reference to whatever in our intellectual environ- 
ment makes faith difficult at the present time. The con- 
stituency to which it addresses itself consists neither of 
dogmatic believers, for whose satisfaction it seeks to show 
how triumphantly their faith can at all possible points of 
assault be defended, nor of dogmatic unbelievers whom 
it strives to convince or confound, but of men whose 


1 Bruce’s Apologetics, p. 34. 


10 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [cu. 


sympathies are with Christianity, but whose faith is 
“¢ stifled or weakened by anti-Christian prejudices of varied 
nature and origin.”? The aim dictates the method. It 
leads to the selection of topics of pressing concern, burn- 
ing questions, leaving on one side, or throwing into the 
background, subjects which formerly occupied the fore- 
ground in apologetic treatises.’ 1 

(iii) With very slight modifications the writer accepts 
this statement of the purpose of Apologetics. Dr. Bruce’s 
own words suggest a change of his sub-title. He is not 
content with, nor even does he mainly aim at, defence. 


He wants to win the doubtful rather than the denying, | 


the hesitant rather than the defiant; he desires not to 
confute and confound, but to persuade. Hence his more 
appropriate sub-title would be Christianity persuasively 
stated. This the writer wishes to emphasise, as what he 
desires is to win for the Christian faith the unbeliever or 
the doubter, and to strengthen the faith of the believer 
who is bewildered and uncertain. It is no merely verbal 
alteration which is involved, but it is a general attitude 
which is insisted on; and needs to be insisted on, as the 
converse has been too prevalent. There are books of 
Apologetics the mention of which would give them an 
advertisement which they do not deserve, of which it 
could be said that in them Christianity is offensively 
stated both in the primary and secondary sense of the 
word. To attack is as legitimate as to defend. The most 
effective attack may sometimes be the most efficient 
defence. To prove Christianity true it may be necessary 
to prove its rivals or opponents false. Even persuasion 
may require an exposure of the inadequacy and defect 


—— a eS 


of views that hinder acceptance of the Christian faith, 


as well as a display of the excellence and sufficiency of 
Christian truth. The war may be carried into the enemy’s 
camp, as well as be Wks around the citadel Me ie caer 


1] INTRODUCTORY a 


manner must not go along with the primary sense as 
regards the method. The attack has been made on the 
position of opponents with a fierceness of tone and a ruth- 
lessness of logic that discredit rather than defend the 
_ Christian position.) To write as though one’s own argu- 
ment were so irrefutable that only a fool could fail to 
- accept it, and only a knave could dare to aylee it, is to 
should be appropriate to the matter and the method. | 
A gospel of grace should be commended and defended | 
graciously. 

(iv) While Apologetics must address itself to the * burn- 
ing questions,’ its method need not be unsystematic, as 
Bruce’s words suggest, although his own book is not. The 
writer in this volume, however, has attempted to order his 
material in such a way as, while dealing with the * topics 
of pressing concern,’ to present as continuous an argument 
as he can. There is a common intellectual, moral, and 
religious situation, to which we may apply the term organic. 
The difficulties, the doubts, and the denials in regard to 
the Christian faith are not isolated or unrelated, but are 
connected in many ways; and accordingly the Christian 
argument that meets all these may aim at unity, even if 
it should fail in achieving it entirely. A glance at the 
table of contents in this book might suggest that the writer 
is offering rather an exposition of the Christian faith than 
a defence. How these two treatments of the common 
subject are related to one another is the question that 
must next be discussed. 

(4) It is usual among systematic theologians to offer 
the exposition of Christian truth in three divisions: Apolo- 
getics, dogmatics, ethics. The distinction of the second 
and the third is obvious. The former deals with what 
the Christian believes, and the latter with what the Christian 
ought to be and to do. The former describes the object 
of faith, the latter determines the ideal of duty. But it 
is not quite so easy to determine the limits of Apologetics 
and dogmatics, or to separate their contents from one 


12 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS ' [cn. 


another. It has even been argued that there is no need for 
a special branch of theology—Apologetics—to undertake 
the task of defending or commending Christianity, for the 
statement of the Christian faith in dogmatics should be 
itself the best defence or commendation which can be 
offered of it. But against this view two considerations 
may be advanced. A complete constructive statement 
may be made without discussing in detail the objections 
from different standpoints advanced against Christianity ; 
and yet it is necessary and desirable that these objections 
should be thoroughly met. Further, the standpoint of 


dogmatics is that of Christian faith. As that faith is not — 


common to all, there is room for, and need of, a branch 
of Christian theology which will seek the points of contact 
between Christian faith and the current thought and life, 
in order to show how an advance may be made from the 
latter to the former. Christian Apologetics seeks to win 
for the Christian faith, which dogmatics describes, and the 
Christian duty, which ethics prescribes, thoughtful and 
serious men by, on the one hand, removing the hindrances 
that contemporary modes of thought or life may interpose, 
and on the other, presenting the arguments that appeal 
most to the reason and the conscience of the age. While 
in both dogmatics and ethics there must be an adaptation 
to the intellectual, moral, and spiritual environment, in 
apologetics this reference to the contemporary tendencies 
and necessities must be more constant, direct, and insistent. 

(5) Accordingly in Christian Apologetics we must con- 


cern ourselves primarily with the thought and life of our ; 
own age, must take up the questions that are forced on — 


Christian faith by the surroundings, and must exercise 
our practical wisdom in determining what are the subjects 
which, in the defence or the commendation of the Christian 
gospel, the contemporary conditions make most urgent. 
There must be selection, as it is clearly impossible that all 
the matters relating to Christian creed or conduct should 
be fully discussed. Nevertheless it is desirable that the 
Christian Apologist should possess for himself at least 


Neeser 


I.] INTRODUCTORY 13 


some general view of the relations of the different branches 
of human knowledge. to one another, and of the place of 
Christian theology in the system of human thought. As 
‘the two divisions of Christian theology, dogmatics and 
ethics, show, Christianity is both religion and morality ; 
or more correctly, even the distinction of religion and 
morality is transcended in a higher unity of Christian life 
receptive from God in faith, and communicative to man in 
love, while anticipative of its perfect fruition and realisa- 
. tionin hope. In the last two chapters of this volume there 
will be offered an exposition and vindication of the Christian” 
hope and also of the Christian ideal, as both are widely | 
challenged to-day, but most of this volume must be devoted - 
to the proof that the Christian view of God, the world, and 
man is true; but, as we cannot isolate Christianity from 
all other religion, this involves an argument that religion 
_is no imposture or illusion. We must maintain the signifi- 
cance and value of the religious view generally, and the 
superiority of the Christian view as proved truth and | 
assured good for men. With regard to the first task we are _ 


primarily concerned with science and philosophy, and in | 


_ respect of the second with criticism and the comparative 
study of religion. u 

(i) When science keeps within its own proper sphere, 7} 
the observation, classification, and correlation of pheno- { 
mena, physical, mental, or moral, or even religious, it does | 
not, and cannot, come into conflict with Christian faith ; ; 
it is only when philosophical hypotheses are advanced as 
scientific conclusions that conflict arises. Such assertions 
as that man has no liberty, but. is determined by his 
heredity and environment; that he is not immortal, 
because the brain produces thought; that miracles are 
impossible because the continuity of phenomenal causes 
is unbroken; that God is an unnecessary assumption, 
because physical force explains the universe, are not 
scientific, and have not the validity of conclusions reached 
by the method of science; they imply a philosophy or 
general view of the world as a whole, and have to be met 


ie ae 


14 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [cn. 


by challenging the adequacy of that philosophy. It is 
true that Christian theology at one time felt itself bound 
to defend certain views about the world and man, because 
of their supposed Scripture authority, with which the 
assured results of science were in conflict. But the 
eotietan Apologist to Oy aw and frankly recognises 
4X that the Bible is not, and~Was never meant to be, a text- 
book of science. He does not challenge astronomy 
because it does not assign to the earth the central position 
in the universe, round which sun and stars are moving. 
He does not try to reconcile geology and Genesis as to the 
duration of the earth, or the order of the creation of plants 
and beasts. He does not insist against biology on the 
special creation of every species, or regard it necessary for 
man’s dignity to deny his physical descent from lower 
forms of life. He does not maintain that primitive man was © 
perfect in wisdom and holiness, and is prepared to learn 
all that anthropology may be able to teach about man’s 
original condition. He does not argue for either the bipar- 
tite or the tripartite character, the dichotomy or the tricho- 
tomy of man’s nature against the psychologist’s insistence 
on the unity of human personality as thinking, feeling, 
willing. He does feel warranted in denying as scientific 
certain popular views whieh are sometimes advanced by 
naturalism as based on science. Man’s worth is not lessened 
because his home appears but as a speck in the vastness of 
the universe, or his history as a span in the duration of the 
world. Life has not been derived from the non-living, nor 
consciousness from the unconscious. Evolution has not 
been proved so continuous as to exclude fresh stages, 
unaccounted for by all that went before. The develop- 
ment of man in manners, morals, laws, society, science, 
philosophy, art, literature, religion proves that he is more 
than one of the animals. «That the primitive man is repre- 
sented by the savage of to-day is altogether doubtful, as 
decadence is possible as well as progress... 
(ii) It is not with science and its approved methods and | 
assured results that the religious view comes into conflict, — 


I.] INTRODUCTORY 15 


' but with assumptions and conjectures that attach them- 
selves illegitimately to science, but are properly described 
as philosophical. No philosophy can claim such a cer- 
tainty as could properly silence the testimony of the 
religious consciousness, or of Christian faith regarding the 
ultimate reality. With respect to the relation of Christian 
Apologetics to philosophy, four considerations may be 
offered. In the first place, the legitimacy of the endeavours 
of philosophy to form a world-view cannot be questioned. 
The challenge which philosophy may offer to the religious 
or Christian world-view cannot be met by denying its 
right to offer such a world-view, but only by showing 
its inadequacy or partiality. 

Secondly, Christian Apologetics may insist that in 
answering these last questions that the mind can ask, not 
only must the speculative curiosity be satisfied, but the 
moral ideals must find their vindication, and the religious 
aspirations their fulfilment. It is the whole man who 
must answer the questions of the world-as-a-whole. The 
moral conscience and the religious consciousness offer 
data which must be taken into account as fully and 
thoroughly as the data of science. If a historical person- 
ality have a unique value for the moral conscience and the 
religious consciousness, a corresponding estimate of him 
must be allowed in any philosophy of history. The defect 
of most philosophies has been that they have been too 
dominantly intellectualist in interest, and too exclusively 
epistemological in method; and this partiality is ‘their 
defect as philosophy, and may be condemned as such. 

Thirdly, the Christian Apologist may insist even that 
_ in answering these final questions, morality and religion 

‘are more authoritative than science. The theoretical 
reason does not penetrate as deeply into the noumenal, 
which is the explanation of the phenomenal, as does the 
practical and the spiritual reason. Rejecting Kant’s 
scepticism regarding the constitutive as well as regulative 
value of the ideas of the theoretical reason, we must give 
a wider significance to the postulates of the practical 


\ 


16 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS _ [cn. 


reason; and we must add, what he was not religious. 
enough to add, but what the universal presence and 
dominant influence of religion in human experience compels 
us to add, the intuitions of the spiritual reason, the human 
vision of, communion with, and possession by the divine. 
The saint and the seer need not use the tones of ‘ whispering 
humbleness’ in the presence of the philosopher, for they 
have the secret of the holy and the divine which thought 
alone will not yield. 

Fourthly, philosophy may be of great use to the Christian 
Apologists. There are many conclusions regarding the 
nature of human knowledge, the validity of human 
thought, the interpretation of the world and man 
which Christian Apologetics need not deal with in detail, 
but which it may accept from the special investigator, 
and utilise for its own more general purpose. Theology 


cannot be divorced from philosophy, nor need the marriage . 


between them be unhappy. 

(iii) It is evident that there are philosophies which so 
contradict the testimony of Christian faith that the 
Christian Apologist can only oppose and reject them. The 
materialism which attempts to account for the universe 
exclusively by matter-in-motion, is the denial of morality 
as well as religion.. The monism of a Haeckel is only -a 
materialism which seeks to cover its nakedness by the. 
fig-leaf of a meaningless phrase about a reality both 
matter and mind, while it actually derives mind from 
matter, and is as non-moral and irreligious. The agnosti- 


cism of a Herbert Spencer shows how little it apprehends — 
or appreciates what religion really is, when it imagines — 


that it has handsomely provided for all the soul’s needs 
by bidding it rear an altar to an Unknowable Ultimate 
Reality. Even the naturalism which, without confess- 
ing itself materialistic, monistic, or agnostic, as regards 
the ultimate reality, treats man as a part and product of’ 
Nature, and not as a person beyond and above Nature, 
and seeks to solve all problems in terms of physical 
science, degrades man in ignoring God. Not only do 


~ 


og 5 INTRODUCTORY 17 


these philosophies prove their inadequacy when moral and 
religious tests are applied, but it can be shown that 
even as explanations of Nature they fall short. The 
necessary limits of this volume forbid the demonstration 
of their falsity here, although the writer has himself for 
his own mental satisfaction gone over all the ground that 
would need to be covered ; but the reader may be referred 
to Ward’s Naturalism and Agnosticism especially as a 
masterly treatment of all the questions here arising.? 

(iv) The Christian Apologist assumes that man is capable». 
of gaining and holding the truth about God, himself, and : ‘ 
the world, and so giving an answer to the questions 
of the essential reality, ultimate cause, and final purpose 
of the universe. We need not here involve ourselves in 
the very abstract problem whether truth is the agreement 
of thought and reality, or the consistency of thought with 
itself, or ‘eventual verification. What we mean by 
truth is that man thinks God, world, and self as they are. 
It is the task of epistemology to deal with this problem of 
the validity of human knowledge; and Christian Apolo- 
getics must reject any epistemology which denies that 
man can know truth. The agnosticism of Spencer tries 
to limit the incapacity of the human mind to the realm 
of religion, while assuming that in the realm of science 
man can and does know. But any such limitation is 
arbitrary ; even if it were contended that sense at least 
is trustworthy, for ‘knowledge is of things we see,’ the 
‘synthetic philosophy’ could not escape doubt, for it 
carries us far beyond the data of sense. The scepticism 
of Hume is more consistent, as it includes even the prin- 
ciple of causality, that basal category of modern science 
among the things that are to be shaken; but it is not. ~~ 
wholly consistent, for the logical issue of scepticism is 
that it annuls itself, for it must doubt its own doubt. If 
man cannot know, how can he know that he cannot know ? | 
But Hume’s scepticism has its great value in the history 
of philosophy, for it is the reductio ad absurdum of the 


1 See also Rashdall’s Philosophy and Religion. 
B 


fb 


18 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS [cH. 


empiricism, sensationalism, and associationalism that 
would derive all knowledge from an experience limited 
to the data of sense, and the associations that the data 
form, and undetermined by reason in man. The intwi- 
tionalism of the deists, and the common-sense philosophy, 
of the Scotch school, are both right in insisting that in- 
knowledge there is an element underived from sense; 
but their common assumption that the human ennai 
brings with it a ready-made stock of ideas, moral and ‘ 
religious as well as theoretical, is to-day an anachronism ‘ 
in view of what we know both of racial evolution and‘ 
individual development. Kant offered a more adequate: 
reply to Hume than the Scotch school. He attempted: 
to exhibit the unity of the reason that constitutes the data; 
of sense into knowledge, by a more exhaustive and syste- 
matic analysis of the contents of knowledge, to show the 
principles necessary to knowledge as a consistent unity. 
But in denying the constitutive as well as regulative value 
of the ideas of the pure reason, he fell back into scepticism, 
from which his postulates of the practical reason offer | 
only a sorry means of escape., We must go beyond Kant 
in insisting that the subjective reason is not alone in the — 
‘universe, but reproduces the objective reason, and that 
‘the necessities of the one correspond to the realities of 
the other. Kant’s subjective or critical idealism, if it is 
not to leave us in scepticism, must lead us on to objective 
or absolute idealism. This step was taken by Hegel; 
but to the Hegelian solution the writer, though under the 
spell of the fine intellect and noble personality of Edward. 
Caird he was for a time held in thrall by it, must urge _ 
two objections. In the first place, the Absolute Spirit is too : 
exclusively a logical idea, or the standpoint is too narrowly . 
intellectualist, so that due weight is not given to the 
witness of the practical and spiritual as of the theoretical 
reason. In the second place, the Objective Reason is too — 
closely identified with the Subjective Reason, so that the 
progress of the universe through man to self-conscious- 
ness appears as the evolution of God Himself. This 
philosophy is not only a panthetsm, which, by ab 


1] INTRODUCTORY 19 


the distinction between God and man, and so excluding 
their mutual relations destroys religions, but as Spirit= 
Idea the pantheism is rather a panlogism, as Pfleiderer 
has rightly described it. In Lotze’s insistence on feeling 
as the test of value, in the tendency Peis ie psychology 
to subordinate cognition to tation, in EKucken’s 
activism, with its demand that man shall raise himself 
by spiritual life into contact with the absolute spiritual 
life, in Bergson’s plea that only by intuition can man hold 
reality as a whole, while intellect seizes only one side of 
it, the writer recognises movements towards what he con- 
ceives to be a higher standpoint. He cannot with prag- 
matism subordinate truth to use or worth; for man’s 
subjective purpose must in some measure correspond with 
the objective purpose of his world, if it is not to be 
thwarted ; and even if his conceptions of the world are 
affected by the use he desires to make of it, he will not 
gain the mastery over it for his own ends even, unless 
these conceptions, tested and corrected in actual contact 
with the world, correspond with its reality. There is an 
objective reality which reveals itself to man as ideals of 
duty, and ideas of truth; for even if man’s world be in 
the making, the pattern thereof is laid up in heaven. 
Bergson’s rejection of teleology in his Creative Evolution 
is surely only a prejudice against a mechanical idea of 
design. The unity, identity, and consistency of per- 
sonality does not exclude liberty ; and so the immanent 
purpose of the universe may realise itself in varied spon- 
taneous movement, and need not involve any rigid pre- 
determination. Personality, with final authority for the 
moral conscience and the religious consciousness, is for 
the writer the ultimate category, perfect in the objective 
reason—God, progressive in the subjective reason—man. 
He conceives man as by nature receptive mentally, morally, 
and spiritually for God, and God as communicative in 
truth, holiness, grace to man, While he does affirm a 
contact and communion with God of the individual man 
in religion, yet as humanity is organic, the individual by 
his very constitution social, the individual development 


20 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [cu. 


is for,the most part mediated by the family, tribal, national, 


and racial evolution. This philosophy may be called © 
personalism;—and it is implicit throughout all that follows — 


in this volume, while, in discussing some of the questions 
before us, it will necessarily be made more explicit. This 
is only a preliminary statement of it; its exposition and 
justification will be attempted in the following pages. 

(v) As Christianity presents itself as a historical reality, 
recorded and interpreted in literary sources, the Christian 
Apologist cannot be indifferent to the results of literary 
and historical criticism. ‘There are many questions of 
date and authorship which make no difference whatever 
to the truth or worth of Christian faith; but with the 
credibility of the literary sources as giving us the certainty 
of the historical reality of divine revelation and human 
redemption in Christ we must concern ourselves in the 
subsequent discussion. 

(vi) The claim for Christianity as the absolute religion, 
destined, because deserving, to be universal, is to-day met 
by the challenge of other faiths ; and that challenge does 
not come merely from the adherents of these faiths. It 
is contended even by Christian thinkers that, even if 
Christianity is the best and truest religion we know, we 
have no right to affirm that it is the best and truest con- 


ceivable. ‘The Christian Apologist must utilise the material 


provided by the comparative study of religions to show 
the superiority of Christianity to all the other faiths ; with 
the guidance of the psychology of religion he must discover 
the necessities and possibilities of man’s religious nature, 
and then prove how Christ meets the one and fulfils the 
other. For him the philosophy of religion must afford not 
only the vindication of the value of religion, and” the 
philosophy of theism the evidence of the validity of the idea 
of God; but both of these, under the illumination and 
inspiration of his Christian faith, become the tutors who 
lead to the Master Christ. 

Such are the problems with which this volume must 


attempt to deal as adequately as the limits of space will 


allow. 


It.] RELIGION AND REVELATION 21 


CHAPTER It 


RELIGION AND REVELATION 


[ 


(1) Durtne last century a great change took place in the 
treatment of religion by science and philosophy. It is no 
longer dismissed as an invention of priests or rulers for their 
own ends, or as merely a survival of barbarism, but accepted 
as a fact to be carefully studied. The sacred scriptures of 
other religions have come to be known and studied by 
Christian scholars; the excavations in Egypt and Meso- 
potamia and other eastern lands have shown how large a 
place religion filled in the ancient world; familiarity on 
the part of missionaries and travellers with the beliefs 
and the customs of savage peoples is proving that there is 
no race so low in the scale of civilisation as to be without 
some movement of the spirit beyond the bounds of the 
sensible. The opinion, once held by some writers on the 
subject, that there are tribes which can be described as 
atheistic, is now being abandoned. For we are recognising 
that the inquiry as to whether a tribe has a religion or not 
is not so easy as it once seemed. On the one hand, the 
missionary or the traveller, having his own definite con- 
ception of what religion should be, may fail to detect 
religion under unfamiliar forms; and on the other hand, 
the native, suspicious of strangers, is likely to conceal as 
far as he can what is his most sacred possession from any 
prying eye. A stranger must live a long time among an 
uncivilised people, and must win their confidence and 
intimacy, before he can gain an accurate knowledge of their 
religion, Archeology, anthropology, and ethnology in the 


22 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [ca. 


multitude of facts collected by them regarding the past 
and present of mankind, are constantly confirming the 
conclusion that religion is universal in the race; that man, 
being what he is, cannot but be religious. It is possible 
for the man, whose culture has suppressed his natural 
impulses, to be secular, agnostic, atheistic; but in the 
spontaneous development of human nature religion appears 
to be inevitable. 

(2) The comparative study of religions leads us a step 
farther. At first sight the endless variety of religious beliefs 
and customs gives the impression of a chaos in which no 
order or law is discoverable, but a closer study shows that 
here, too, there is cosmos, for many uniformities can be 
traced. Differences, climatic, racial, economic, social, 
affect the forms which the religious life assumes; and 
much remains to be done in showing that the diversity in 
these forms is not altogether accidental or arbitrary ; yet 
the soul of man is one and the same, and _ striking 
similarities in religious ideas and rites prove this. Such 
similarities need not be explained as the borrowings of 
one religion from another, nor be marvelled at as curious 
coincidences, but may be regarded as evidence that the 
human mind functions in the same way, wherever the 
conditions are to any degree similar. It is not at all neces- 
sary to assume that the religious development of every 
people has been exactly the same, showing the same 
phases and passing through the same stages. There have 
been, in varying degreés, in different races, stagnation, 
progress, decadence. One race has been influenced by 
another, and its progress been retarded and advanced. 
Nevertheless, it seems possible to sketch the normal 
religious progress of the race, assigning in the process its 
proper place to each form which the religious life has 
assumed. 

(3) The comparative study of religions thus leads us on’ 
to the psychology of religion. If amid all variety of beliefs > 


1 The writer has attempted to do-this in his book, The Christian Oertainty 
amid the Modern Perplexity, pp. 64-76. 


It.] RELIGION AND REVELATION 23 


and customs there is but one and the same religious life 
expressed, it is possible to study the working of the human 
soul in religion, what it thinks, how it feels, at what it 
aims in this particular relation. What are the conceptions, 
emotions, and volitions which are distinctive of religion ? 
It cannot be affirmed that there is any general agreement 
on all the questions raised ; but it may be maintained that 
there is a growing tendency towards agreement. ‘There 
is less inclination than there was to treat religion as a kind 
of mental aberration; and it is being recognised as the 
normal response of the spirit of man to his supersensible 
environment. 

(i) Many attempts have been made to state in a few 
words what religion is. But even great thinkers have 
committed themselves to definitions which are partial. 
To take only three great German thinkers in illustration 
of this statement—Hegel, Kant, and Schleiermacher—each 
lays stress on only one of the psychic factors. Hegel’s 
view of religion as a less adequate apprehension of ultimate 
reality than that reached by philosophy recognises only 
its intellectual aspect. Kant’s attempt to reduce religion 
to morality in confining it to the recognition of our moral 
obligations as divine commands, regards it only as practical, 
only in so far as it affects man’s action. Schleiermacher 
comes nearer the core of the matter when he defines 
religion as the sense of dependence on God, as feeling is 
essential to religion ; but he, too, unduly isolates this one 
_ aspect from the others. What the failure of these defini- 
- tions teaches us is, that in religion the whole personality 
_ of man is exercised, and that thought, feeling, and will are 
' all factors. There is not, as mysticism has sometimes 
assumed, an organ of religion distinct from the activity of 
_the whole personality in thinking, feeling, willing ; and it 
‘cannot even be shown that there is any peculiarity in the 
exercise of mind, heart, and will in religion absent from 
_ the ordinary activity of the human personality. Sub- 
_ jectively we cannot fix what is distinctive of religion. 

(ii) We must look from the subject to the object of 


24 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [cu. 


religion to discover its distinctiveness. To say that 
religion is the relation of man to God is to import an 
advanced stage of the development of man’s religious 
thought into its earlier stages. The word God has too 
definite a content to describe generally the object of 
religion. If we use the term divine at all, we must be 
prepared to assign to it a very vague meaning. It is the 
supersensible, the superhuman, the supernatural, to which 
man relates himself in his religion. He recognises beyond 
the visible the invisible, above himself power greater than 
his own, over the forces of Nature, even such as he knows, 
forces greater still. He confesses his dependence on these 
invisible greater powers or forces; they can advance or 
hinder his good, they can restrain or inflict evil. He 
endeavours to enter into such relations with them as will 
avert their displeasure, or secure their favour. 

(iii) It is not an explanation of the world around him 
that he primarily seeks in religion. There has been a wide- 
spread tendency among theologians, philosophers, and 
even anthropologists to lay too much stress on this intel- 
lectual factor of religion. The theory that seeks to account 
for religion by animism, the explanation of movement and 
change in the world around by the belief in spirits, too 
exclusively identifies primitive religion with primitive 
science or philosophy. In discarding animism science is 
not superseding religion, but is itself advancing from the 
primitive to the more mature intellectual stage. It is: 
not an intellectual curiosity that man satisfies in his religious 
beliefs ; he is meeting a practical necessity. It is the pro- 
tection of, and the provision for, his own life about which 
he is concerned ; and he spontaneously, and not deliber-— 
ately, conceives his world so that this purpose seems 
practicable. 

(iv) In the conception which is distinctive of religion 
there is progress ; without tracing that progress in detail, 
we may note one feature of it: the divine is first of all) 
conceived vaguely as a multitude of spirits, and then’ 
more distinctly thought of as a smaller company of gods. 


ont ete 


II. ] RELIGION AND REVELATION 25 


It is not suggested that the believer consciously makes 
such a distinction ; but the modern thinker, looking back 
on the development, can. Spirits and gods seem to be 
distinguished in three respects. The gods are more dis- 
stinctly conceived as like man; their power is thought 
of as greater; they are more supernatural and super- 
human, and they are in closer and more constant alliance 
with their worshippers. Around the gods there gathers 
a growing mythology ; but this development is not purely 
religious. Imagination and intellect are here active 
beyond the necessities and impulses of religion. It would 
be quite a mistake, therefore, to assume that the religious 
life is determined by the mythology. Only a few of the 
ideas therein expressed are religiously operative. As the 
intellectual development advances, there is further a 
tendency to conceive the divine as unity; but to this 
question we must at a later stage of the discussion return. 

(v) As man conceives of life, so will he conceive the 
good to be gained, or the evil to be shunned, by the help 
of the gods or spirits. In the earliest stages of develop- 
ment man was primarily concerned about meeting his 
bodily wants; what he sought was natural goods. But 
as his social relations developed and his moral conscience 


‘advanced, he would seek a moral good as well as natural 


goods. ‘The tribal deity was the guardian of the tribal 
custom, as well as the protector of the tribal existence. 
There has been a great deal of profitless writing about the 
relation of morality and religion, because the discussion 
has been too abstract. If we keep our eye on the concrete 
reality of life, and see how in human development its 
range expands and its content increases, first the natural, 


next the social, then the moral, we shall understand how 


at first religion seems to subserve only natural goods, 
and how only slowly it comes to be allied with the moral 
good. As we shall afterwards see, in the highest stage 
morality is inseparable from religion. 

(vi) However man conceive the end of his life, for its at- 
tainment he feels his need, and so seeks the aid of the spirits 


26 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETI 


or gods. What means does he use to secure their favs 3 
or to avert their displeasure ? Prayer and sacrifice 


the means recognised in all religions. It is held pont 


thinkers, however, that either magic preceded, or may be 
regarded as a supplement to, these means. In his magic 
man believed himself to be able to bring about such 
changes in the world around as he desired; he believed 
that he could raise the wind, bring down the rain, or make 
his fields fruitful by the use of such means as seemed 
appropriate to him—e.g. sprinkling the ground with water 
in imitation of the desired rain. Only when he discovered 
that his powers were limited did he invoke higher powers, 
and so replaced magic by religion. In the same way it 
is held as man discovers that science gives him a greater 
control over Nature than prayer or sacrifice ever could, 
will he discard religion in turn. With this question 
Jevons has dealt fully, and has shown that magic and 
religion are not so related to one another; but that magic 
may be regarded as the primitive applied science.1_ Where 
magical practices continue in a religion as a means of 
coercing the gods to do man’s bidding, this must be 
regarded as a relapse in the religious development, even 


as irreligious, because opposed to the fundamental con- . 


ception of the divine as the higher power on which 


man depends. Prayer and sacrifice then remain as the © 


distinctively religious acts, however complicated may 
come to be the ritual which grows up around them. It 
is only at an advanced stage of development that morality 
and religion are brought into so close a relation to one 
another that the holy life comes to be regarded as the 
sacrifice that is acceptable unto God. 

(vil) What are the emotions which are distinctive of 
religion? The saying has come down to us from antiquity 
that fear made the gods. It has been maintained, on the 
contrary, that confidence and even affection are charac- 
teristic of the worshipper towards his god. Such con- 
tradiction is due to a too abstract standpoint. The 


1 An Introduction to the History of Religion, chap. iv. 


oo 


1.) RELIGION AND REVELATION 27 


environment and the circumstances of the worshipper 
would largely determine his emotions. A nature apparently 
hostile would awaken fear ; a nature manifestly beneficent 
would kindle hope. Where the deities are conceived as 
for the most part unfriendly, the explanation probably 
is that either natural or tribal conditions made life hard 
and dangerous. Even where prayer or sacrifice is offered 
to avert divine displeasure, there is the assumption that 
the deities can be won over. The sentiment, whether 
painful or pleasurable, may survive the conditions that 
evoked it, and so we must not look for a constant corre- 
spondence. The remembrance of help divinely given 
before might sustain trust and hope of deliverance in the 
most adverse circumstances. The religious life is far too 
variable and complex for such one-sided statements 
about the emotions peculiar to it. In religion there is 
experience of the divine presence. The worshipper feels 
himself in the presence of, or even possessed by, his god. 
The feeling may be one of awe and terror, or of exalta- 
‘tion. However artificial may be the means used to 
produce such ecstatic conditions, we cannot dismiss as 
altogether unreal the sense of the divine which the 
worshipper may sometimes possess. 

(viii) There is a belief so closely related to the belief in 
gods that the two beliefs have been treated as identical : 
the belief in ghosts, or the survival of the dead. Herbert 
Spencer would explain all religious ceremonies as funeral 
rites, and Grant Allen traces the god back to the ghost. 
In the two conceptions there is much in common. The 
conception of the soul as distinct from the body makes 
possible the belief that the soul may survive the death of 
the body. As sleep is a temporary, so death is a permanent 
severance of the soul from the body. The conception of 
the spirits, out of which the idea of the gods, as has already 
been indicated, slowly emerges, is similar, for they are 
related to material objects and physical changes as the 
soul is to the body and its movements. But it is not 
proved that the belief in ghosts preceded the belief in 


28 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS _ [cn. 


spirits. As soon as man gained, in whatever way, the 
rudimentary sense of the distinction of soul and body, he 
would probably apply it to explain change to Nature 
around him directly, without the délour of belief in ghosts. 
It is much more likely that he conceived Nature in the 
likeness of his own living self than of his dead ancestors. 
His primitive speculation about the world around him 
would be as early as about his future destiny. What 
for our purpose must be emphasised, is that the belief in 
the survival of death arises as spontaneously as the belief 
in spirits or gods. In the course of religious development 
the gods are brought into relation to the unseen world as 
exercising authority there as here, and as thus affecting 
man’s future destiny as well as his present existence. 
As the deities become moralised, and their rule recog- 
nises moral distinctions among men, that life hereafter 
may be conceived as the scene of moral judgment, as in 
the Egyptian Book of the Dead; and the vague concep- 
tion of the continued existence of ghosts haunting their 
old homes may yield to the more definite idea of a separa- 
tion of good and bad in an abode of bliss or a place of woe. 
In the course of religious development Kant’s three 
postulates of the practical reason, God, freedom, and 
immortality, are brought into ever closer relation, 

(ix) This description of religion, which is based on the 
facts of man’s religious history, spares us the profitless 
abstract discussions about the definition of religion and 
the theories of its origin. In religion, as we have seen, 
man seeks through prayer and sacrifice to secure the 
aid of the supersensible, supernatural, and superhuman 
powers which he conceives as controlling Nature, and 
so determining his own life, to realise his good, natural, 
moral, or future, however he may think of it. The earliest 
form of religion most imperfectly discloses its nature, 
which is displayed only in its progressive evolution, and 
it is a fallacy to offer an account of the alleged primitive 


religion as a theory of its origin, Religion is one of man’s . 


Tesponses to the world around him, and it is no more to 


u.] RELIGION AND REVELATION 29 


be identified with its earliest form than is man’s science 
and morality, or to be discredited by its lowly origin than 
these are. 

(4) All that the psychology of religion can do is to show 
what are the factors, intellectual, emotional, volitional, in 
the activity of the personality as religious; what are the 
conditions and stages of the development of the religious 
consciousness. It can answer the questions what and how, 
but it cannot say why. With the value of religion the 
philosophy of religion is concerned. That philosophy must 
deal with religion as one element in man’s complex life, it 
must show how it has influenced morality and the evolution 
of society, how it has affected culture and civilisation, and 
how it has been related to knowledge in science or phil- 
osophy, and must estimate whether it has been a helpful 
or a harmful force in human progress. 

(i) The estimate of the Epicurean Lucretius that religion 
was responsible for many and great evils,! is not prevalent 
to-day. Positivism, hostile to Christianity, recognises the 
need of religion for social morality ; and Benjamin Kidd, 
whose method of stating his case is open to serious criticism, 
has laboured to prove that it is religion which gives altru- 
ism the victory over egoism, and that this is the condition 
of social progress.2, Something has already been said as 
to the influence of religion on morality, and any unpreju- 
diced consideration of the course of European history will 
establish the conviction that, despite all the errors of 
organised Christendom in clinging to old moral conven- 
tions when the moral spirit had advanced beyond them, 
the Christian ideal and motive has been a potent instrument 
in moral progress. One need not exaggerate the super- 
stition and corruption of the pagan ancient world, or ignore 
the purifying and ennobling influence of ancient philosophy, 
. to be convinced that the moral difference between ancient 


and modern society is mainly due to the leaven of Christian- 


ity. The transformation that is taking place all over the 


1 *Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.’—De Rerum Natura, i. 1, 102. 
2 Social Evolution and Principles of Western Civilisation. 


30 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [cn. 


world in savage races under the activity of Christian 
missions, although elements of evil mingle with the good, 
the chaff with the wheat, is in the present confirming the 
testimony of the past. As a religion becomes more moral 
it reinforces morality, and so strengthens society, and the 
tendency in a developing religion is towards a closer alliance 
with morality. Christianity demands a holy life in the 
children of the Holy Father, and with its emphasis on love 
throws the stress on social morality.1 This Christian ideal 
Nietzsche as vainly as arrogantly challenges. Here is 
not needed any detailed proof of the inspiration religion 
has given to art and literature. The value of religion here 
is not seriously challenged ; but we are confronted with a 
more serious problem when we face the relation of religion 
to science or philosophy. 

(ii) If, on the one hand, Comte, in the interests of science, 
and a philosophy developed into a religion based on 
science, relegated theology to the lowest superseded stage 
of human evolution, and Spencer to gain freedom to con- 
struct a synthetic philosophy in terms of matter-in-motion, 
with feigned courtesy bowed religion out of the narrow 
realm of the Known into the boundless region of the Un- 
knowable, some Christian theologians on the other have 
been foolish enough to oppose Genesis to astronomy, 
geology, biology, or anthropology as ‘science falsely so- 
called.’ The contrast between religion, on the one hand, 
and science or philosophy on the other hand, is twofold ; 
the habits of mind resulting are different, and the conclu- 
sions advanced may conflict. The methods of science, 
observation, classification, experiment, generalisation, are 
not those of religion, which are the intuition of the seer, the 
ecstasy of the worshipper, the submission of the saint. 
Science aims at being as objective as possible, religion is | 
real only as the objects of faith subjectively affect the 
believer. Philosophy, too, aims at the objectivity of a 
rational system, the parts of which are logically connected 
apart from the wishes and beliefs of the thinker. Here there 


1 See the volume entitled Christ and Civilisation. 


II. | RELIGION AND REVELATION 31 


is less success, however, in rigidly excluding ‘ the personal 
equation,’ and even in systems such as Spinoza’s or Hegel’s 
the personality of the thinker betrays itself. Religion, 
although in its theology it may move outward to the 
circumference of a rational system, in its most intense form 
moves inward to the centre of the human personality in 
contact and communion with, dependent on, and domin- 
ated by the divine. The man of science or the philosopher 
seeks to master reality by knowledge and reason, the man 
of religion is mastered by a reality, supersensible, super- 
natural, which transcends the reality which science explains 
or philosophy interprets. Science ignores the noumenal, 
philosophy uses it to rationalise the phenomenal ; but in it 
religion lives, and moves, and has its being. Eminent men 
of science have been pious Christians; but in most if not 
all these cases the intellect, so active in the investigation 
of nature, has not been equally exercised in the interpreta- 
tion of religion, and the fearless inquirer in the one realm 
has often acquiesced in the current orthodoxy in the other. 
Even when the seer or saint does not distrust science, he does 
not feel at home in it. How often does the philosopher 
with his logical abstractions, the net in which he thinks he 
has caught the universe, although much that has most 
value for religion and morality has slipped through its 
meshes, stand aloof from, and in some cases even assume 
an attitude of too conscious superiority to, the moral 
purposes and the religious aspirations of men living in- 
tensely and strenuously. This intellectual detachment 
from the emotional stress and the volitional strain of life 
is not an advantage, but a defect, when not this or that 
aspect of reality is to be apprehended in thought, but when 
the total reality is to be appreciated in its worth, and 
appropriated in its aim. Morality in the good it seeks, 


and religion in the good it has found, are approaches to » 


ultimate reality not less, but more vital than those of 
science and philosophy, and probably give a more immedi- 
‘ate contact with that ultimate reality than knowledge can 
ever give. To assert this is not to be guilty of irrational- 


32 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [cu. 


ism, but simply to demand that all the data of life as well 


as thought must be taken into account in any answer to 
the last questions of the mind. 

(5) If, however, we are to assert the value of religion as 
well as morality, even for human knowledge, we must be 
able to maintain the validity of the intuitions of religion 
regarding the ultimate reality. For science and phil- 
osophy may reach conclusions regarding what the universe 
in its primal cause and final purpose is, which are in con- 
flict with the certainty of religion that the divine, however 
apprehended, is that in which all things are, from which 
they move, towards which they tend. To reconcile this 
conflict must be the function of the philosophy of theism 
which it seems to the writer desirable to distinguish from 
the philosophy of religion, reserving to the latter the proof 
of the subjective value of religion as a factor in human 
experience and development, and assigning to the former 
the evidence for the objective validity of the conception 
of the divine for the interpretation of the universe as a 
whole. It is quite evident that as it is not the task of the 
philosophy of religion to assert the value of any religious 
belief, rite, and custom, but to Separate the accidental 
from the essential in religion, and to vindicate only the 
latter, so it is not the function of the philosophy of theism 
to claim for every conception of the divine that it is true, 
but to follow the process of self-criticism in the develop- 
ment of theism, and to subject to a strict criticism even the 
outcome of that process in the idea of God in the Christian 
religion. But to this duty we must return in a subsequent 
chapter (Chapter v1.). 

(6) We have so far endeavoured to treat religion as a 
unity ; but it need hardly be said that this is a unity in 
variety. The religion of savages can be described by the 
general term animism, and shows great similarities in 
belief, rite, and custom, but in the course of human develop- 
ment in the peoples who have advanced in culture and 
civilisation, religion has changed its forms ; polydaemon- 
ism is superseded by polytheism, a mythology is enshrined 


> @- ae 


Ir. ] RELIGION AND REVELATION 33 


in the literature as in Egypt, Assyria and Babylon, and 
India. In a few cases a more thorough transformation 
has taken place under the dominating influence of a great 
personality, as in the Buddhism of India, the Zoroastrian- 
ism of Persia, the Mohammedanism of Arabia, the Con- 
fucianism of China. Some religions are literary, in 
possessing sacred scriptures; a few are historical as well 
in the sense of showing a record of development, the action 
of a person or persons. Although the object of religion— 
the divine—is eternal, the subject of religion—man—is 
affected by temporal conditions, and so history and religion 
_ are brought into close alliance. It is quite impossible to 
regard the historical form of the religions which have such 
records of progress as accidental, for the conception of the 
divine itself is vitally related to the person and work of the 
founder of the religion, and the piety of the professors of 
the religion attaches itself immediately to the founder. 
When in a subsequent chapter we come to deal with the 
historical reality of Jesus Christ, it will be necessary to 
consider more closely this connection of religion with 
history. 

(7) There is an assumption in all religion, the significance 
of which has not been adequately appreciated by Christian 
Apologists. In their zeal to prove the value of the Christian 
revelation, they have failed to acknowledge fully that all 
religion as sincere implies revelation as real. In the beliefs, 
rites, customs of all religions there is much that is merely 
traditional and conventional; and probably the majority 
of the professors of a religion seldom, if ever, get beyond 
such a remote relation to the object of worship. But 
religion at its core is more than this, and the more devout 
worshippers seek more than this. Some contact and com- 
munion with, some communication from or possession by 
the deity worshipped is sought. In totemism by partaking 
of the sacred flesh of the animal that as a class is the deity 
of the tribe, the tribesmen seek to renew the common life 
of god and worshipper. In the exercises to bring about 
trance or ecstasy there is the endeavour to come into 

Oo 


34 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS [ca 


immediate relation to the divine. This mystic element, 
if, failing a better word, we must so describe it, is vital 


" \ to religion. If religion be a mutual relation of divine. 


and human, of deity and worshipper, the divine must 
participate in it as well as the human, the deity must 
respond in gifts to the prayers or sacrifices of the wor- 
shipper. Religion would be utter illusion if man in his 
religion is simply projecting himself into, satisfying him- 
self with, the void of his own imagination and desire. 
Religion necessarily implies revelation. 


pal 


(1) In the religious consciousness man is aware of the 
_ world, himself, and God. Of himself he has a direct 
knowledge in his self-consciousness ;_ he is a self only m the 
measure that he thus knows himself. Of the world he has 
a mediated knowledge through his senses, and what his 
mind makes of the data of sense. What is his knowledge 
of God? If world and self are for him real, so he believes 
God to be real. But if he knows himself in his own 
. activities, if he knows the world through the effects in his 
sensations of its changes and movements, does he not also 
know God as real, because active mediately in the world 
around him, and more directly in his own religious impulses 
and aspirations? It takes the sophisticated logician to 
conceive, and the sophisticated rhetorician to demonstrate, 
that while self and world are real and active, God neither 
is nor acts. Man does not know God apart from self or 
world, yet he distinguishes God from both. There is an 
impulse, native to religion, to raise the divine above the 
natural and the human. The degeneration of religion has 
always been when God was conceived too exclusively from 
the standpoint of world or self. The advance of religion 
has been secured by a purification and elevation of the 
conception of the divine above the merely natural or human. 
How could man so rise above himself and his world to think 
of God as greater, mightier. wiser, better than all he found 


~~ 


II.] RELIGION AND REVELATION 35 


within or without, unless God Himself was a present 
reality to his consciousness, self-communicative to his mind 


_ or spirit ? Man can know God only as God makes Himself 


_ known. For to treat man’s knowledge of God as an ideal- 
 isation of himself only does not explain how man is able 
so to stretch above his own stature; and to treat his 
dependence on, or submission to, God as a confidence in 
himself, or an obedience to himself, is to make what meets 
his needs, comforts his sorrows, and rescues him from his 
distresses a self-mockery. To interpret God in terms of 
self or world only is to treat religion not as true but 
as fictitious, and so to deny its truth, worth, or claim. 
Religion is an illusion unless revelation be a reality.1 

(2) We must insist that this revelation is permanent and 
universal. 
» (i) We dare not say in view of the permanence and the 
universality of religion in the history of mankind, that in 
any age or in any land God has left Himself altogether 
without witness. There is in man, always and every- 
where, the impulse to seek and to find God in the world 
around or in his own soul; and it is God Himself who 
inspires the aspiration, to which He then gives the satis- 
faction. Man’s receptivity for, and responsiveness to, this 
activity of God varies with the manifold and changeful 
conditions of his thought and life. The conception of the 
divine is conditioned by his apprehension of the meaning 
of the world, and his appreciation of the worth of himself. 
We may, if we are foolish enough, ask the vain question : 
Why was mankind not made perfect in knowledge, 
morality, and religion? But accepting the fact of evolu- 
tion, the gradual progress of mankind, it is no more a 
reproach to religion that the truth about God has been 
reached only through many mistakes and errors, than it 
is to science or morality that their progress has been so 
slow along what seem now so devious paths. In religion 
as well as morality we see, even more than in knowledge, 


1 See the writer’s article on ‘Revelation’ in Hastings’ Bible Dictionary, 
Extra Volume, pp. 321-36. 


36 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [cn. 


aberrations and perversions, the more offensive to us 
because of the value of that which is thus misrepresented. 

(ii) In the sacred scriptures of the different literary 
religions the claim is advanced that God has spoken to 
man, and that in these writings God’s message is enshrined. 
The founders of the great religions claimed to have received ° 
a word of truth for their fellows. Even Gautama, in whose | 
religion the gods of the native religion play no part, claims 
the discovery of a secret of salvation, for the communication 
of which he is entitled the Buddha, or Enlightener. How 
impossible it is in the highest concerns of the soul for the 
mind to confine itself within the rigid circle of the human 
is shown by the later developments of Buddhism, where 
the man Buddha becomes a supernatural being. Prosaic 
and unspiritual as in many respects Confucius was, yet he 
believed himself to be doing the will and interpreting the 
mind of Heaven in his teaching. Man cannot rest in any 
truth as ultimate in the concerns of the soul unless he 
believes that it comes from the ultimate reality. 

(ili) The Holy Scriptures of the Christian faith concede 
the reality of a wider revelation of God to man. ‘To con- 
fine our illustrations to the New Testament only, Jesus 
sees the care and bounty of the Heavenly Father in the 
birds of the air and the flowers of the field, and He gladly 
and thankfully welcomes all tokens of Gentile faith. The 
writer of the Fourth Gospel in his Prologue takes up the 
Old Testament doctrine of the Divine Word, Wisdom, or 
Spirit in the Greek conception of the Logos, the self-revela- 
tion of God in Nature and man, and declares that that 
Word has become incarnate in Jesus Christ. When con- 
fronted with a simple paganism, Paul at Lystra (Acts xiv. 
15-17) appeals to God as the Maker, and to the evidence of 
His rule in the rains and fruitful seasons filling men’s hearts 
with food and gladness. To the more intellectual audience 
at Athens (xvii. 22-31) he develops an argument against 
idolatry from God’s immanence and man’s affinity to God. 
In his survey of the Gentile world in Romans i.-ii., he 
traces back its moral depravity and religious degradation 


II. | RELIGION AND REVELATION 37 


to a wilful ignorance of God, and a consequent wilful 
perversion of the worship and service of God. In Gala- 
tians (iv. 1-9) he seems to see in the pagan world as in 
Judaism a preparation for the Gospel. The comparative 
study of religions confirms this conviction of religion, that 
not only is there the movement of mankind towards God, 
but that in that very movement God has been approaching 
man. 

(3) Christian Apologists have sometimes tried to show 
that Christianity is true by seeking to prove that all other 
religions are false. Such a defence is not only logically 
weak, as it is more difficult to secure credence for one 
religion if all other religions are declared untrustworthy ; 
_ but it is inconsistent with the gracious spirit of the Christian 
faith. A religion for which God is love must deal very 
lovingly with all endeavours of the spirit of man to find 
God. The recognition of the permanence and universality 
of the divine revelation, as the necessary condition of any 
value and validity in human religion, does not shut out, 
however, the claim that there has been also a special 
revelation unique in its significance and value for the 
human race. The justification for such a claim may be 
briefly sketched. 

(i) It would seem that for excellence in any human 
pursuit-concentration of effort and consequent limitation 
of interest were necessary. It is-therefore not inherently 
improbable that one nation should be more concerned 
about the things of the spirit than another, even that in 
one nation there should be such predominance of religion 
as marked it out from all other peoples. It is generally 
‘conceded that in the life of the Hebrew nation religion 
filled a larger place than in the life of any other nation. 
Its prophetic succession was the one distinction that 
among the other nations excelling it in the manifold gifts 
of culture, and arts of civilisation, it could claim. If it 
_be said that it was endowed with a unique genius for 
religion, that does not dispose of the claim that it enjoyed 
“a unique revelation, for, as has already been shown, 


38 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [cu. 


religion implies revelation; it involves a contact with and 
communication from God such as no other human pursuit 
does; the greater the human receptivity of religion the 
greater the divine communicativeness of revelation. 

(ii) Yet when we look more closely at the history as it is 
unfolded in trustworthy records, what we do find is not 
so much a spontaneous interest in, and a voluntary con- 
centration on, religion, as a constraint of divine providence, 
and an influence of teachers conscious of being God’s 
messengers, which kept the people, prone to stray, in this 
narrow path of the divine appointing. The religion of 
any people is affected by the manifold conditions of its 
life; the thought of God is determined by the knowledge 
of self and world possessed ; and there has been a tendency 
in many religions to decadence rather than to progress. 
In the Hebrew nation we find this same tendency under 
the same influences; but it is counteracted in the two 
ways already indicated, in historical events and prophetic 
monitions. 

(iii) It is not at all unreasonable to accept the account 
that the religion gives of itself. The people in its highest 
minds regarded itself as chosen and called, guided and 
guarded, taught and trained by God for His own ends. 
That God’s method with all nations should not be uniform, 
’ but show the variety of selection of one people for one 
function, and another for another, cannot be said to be 
inherently improbable. If the modern conception of 
society as organic is applied, as it may be legitimately, 
to humanity, we may think of the different nations as 
members of the one body with varying functions. If there 
be a divine teleology in human history, it is not incredible 
that this one nation should be elected by limitation of its 
interest and concentration of its effort, so to develop 
religiously as to become a less impeded channel than any 
other for the divine communications which would ulti- 
mately benefit all mankind. 

(iv) In the development of this people we can trace a 
religious progress which means a progressive revelation. 


ego 


Ping eee ee eee ee 


| RELIGION AND REVELATION 39 


When, as is often done, sayings from other sacred writings 
are set side by side with the teachings of the Old and the 
New Testament, with the intention by such a comparison 
to minimise the superiority of this religion to others, what 
we are entitled to offer in reply is the challenge to show 
in the history of any other religion such a progress. No 
sacred books record such a history of divine dealing in 
providence, and divine teaching in prophecy in any other 
nation, as does the Old Testament. As the writer reads 
this record, making no assumption of inspiration for it, 
accepting all assured results of biblical scholarship in regard 
to it, he becomes more and more impressed with the 
reasonableness of the standpoint that the course of events 
in the history of the nation was God’s providence for it, 
and that the interpretation of these events by the prophets 
was God’s own communication of His mind and will in 
mercy or in judgment. Sometimes the divine teleology 
may be marked out with a greater minuteness than can 
now appear to us probable. But it is deeply impressive 
to see one great empire after another brought into contact 
with this small nation, not only affecting its outward 
fortunes, but by the prophetic mediation its moral and 
religious development. How far that process in its two- 
fold aspect of providence and prophecy is to be regarded 
as strictly supernatural we must in the next chapter 
.inquire; for the present argument it is enough to insist 
that this religious progress, and its corresponding pro- 
gressive revelation, is unique. 

(v) This movement has a goal: the consummation of the 
Old Testament religion and revelation is in Jesus Christ. 
In His assurance of being the Son of God religion finds its 
fulfilment ; in His certainty of the Fatherhood of God 
revelation has its completion. Through His truth and 
grace men are not only made certain that God is Father, 
but are also assured that they may become the children 
of God, for He as Saviour delivers them from the bondage 
of their sin, the hindrance to their life as the children of 
God, enjoying His Fatherly love. The personality of 


40 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS _ [cua. 


Jesus Christ morally and spiritually so transcends even the 
previous progress towards Him, that if we are entitled to 


regard the process as unique, He Himself stands alone and | 


above all other men as the personal revelation of God 
who has no peer. When through the presentation of Jesus 
in the gospels we come into His spiritual presence, and see 
Him face to face, He so impresses our souls that His 
certainty that He was the Son of God, revealing God as 
Father unto man, appears supremely reasonable, and His 
assurance that we may become the children of God seems 
entirely credible. Before we have formed any doctrine of 
His person or His work, He makes His impression upon us. 

(vi) The significance and value of the New Testament 
for us lies in this: that in these writings the personal 
impression of Jesus comes to us fresh and deep, and, as 
we yield ourselves to that impression, the interpretation 
of Him by some of those who were so impressed by Him 
commends itself to us as just and true. If we find that some 
of the terminology is borrowed from Jewish or Greek 
sources, and that some of the logic does not appeal to us 
as it did to the first readers, yet the reality of what Christ 
proved Himself to be as Saviour and Lord to these witnesses 
remains for us, and below their estimate of Him, as we 
share their experience, we cannot fall. He brings God to 
us, and us to God, and so for us Heis God. That valuation 
a later chapter (Chapter Iv.) must further justify. 

(vii) As this revelation claims to be final and sufficient 
for the present religious life of man, it must be perpetuated 


and diffused. This is secured by the Holy Scriptures, the , 


record and literature of the revelation, by the Christian 


Church with its testimony to, and influence for, the Gospel © 


of God’s grace, and by the Holy Spirit, whose perpetual 
presence in, and inexhaustible power to cleanse, enlighten, 
and renew mankind makes the Scriptures and the Church 
alike the channels for the currents of the divine truth and 
grace. In the Christian life the contact and communion 
with God, which sincere piety has ever sought, which came 
to the prophets as a special endowment for their vocation, 


a ee 


II. ] RELIGION AND REVELATION 41 


has become our assured possession. In the Spirit men 
know themselves to be living in God, and He in them. 
It is the repetition in every age and in all lands (as the 
modern missionary records testify) of the experience of 
salvation in Christ, the continuous renewal of the life in 
the Spirit in those who yield themselves to Christian 
influences, which is the perpetual witness that God was, 
and still is, in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, 
not imputing unto men their trespasses, and committing 
unto them the ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor. v. 19). 

(viii) Meanwhile, we make no assumption about the 
' inspiration of the writings in the Bible or the supernatural 
character of any of the events or the persons in this religious 
history, which beginning in the first consciousness in the 
Hebrew nation of an intimate relation to Jehovah as the 
Covenant-God, was continued in ever clearer spiritual 
vision by the succession of the prophets, was consummated 
in Jesus’ consciousness of Sonship and revelation of God’s 
Fatherhood, and is still to-day the richest spiritual posses- 
sion of mankind; but are content now to claim that it 
may be regarded as a unique revelation of God to man. 

(4) There are two questions which modern thought now 
forces upon us. Does the method of the study of the Bible 
current to-day allow or forbid such a conclusion, and in 
what way can we satisfy ourselves as to its soundness ? 
We must briefly consider here the religious-historical 
method and the theory of value-judgments.! 

(i) The religious-historical method is an extension of the 
‘Higher Criticism’ due to the influence of the idea of 
evolution in all modern thinking, and to the recognition 
of the significance of the comparative study of religions 
for the understanding of Christianity. The challenge of 
the religious-historical school to the Christian theologian 
is this: Christianity must be treated as one of the religions 


1 The writer has already written a good deal on both of these subjects, 
and as the limits of space necessitate a very brief treatment of both here, 
he may be allowed to refer the reader for a fuller treatment to The 
Christian Certainty amid the Modern Perplexity, pp. 44-63, and pp. 230-821. 


42 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS [cH. 


of the world, and be studied in no other way than these 


are. The challenge itself, however, already involves an , 


assumption—namely, that there cannot be any religion so 
unlike all other religions as to require other categories of 
thought for its adequate interpretation than the others 
require. This could be justified only as the conclusion of 
the comparison of Christianity with other religions, and 
not as its presupposition. It will be found that this 
method in its principles, and still more in the application of 
them, is ever seeking to deny the uniqueness of Christianity, 
and to assert its resemblance to, or even dependence on, 
other religions. 

(ii) What then are the principles of the method? In the 


first place the sources of the religion in the Sacred Scrip- | 


tures must be subjected to the same literary and historical 
criticism as any other writings. To this demand one can 
give a cordial assent. Just thirty years ago William 
Robertson Smith was debarred from the discharge of his 
duties as a professor in the Aberdeen College of the Free 
Church of Scotland for his advocacy of the ‘ Higher 
Criticism’ as applied to the Bible; but now the method 
is accepted without demur in nearly all the theological 
colleges of not only Scotland, but of the English-speaking 
world! For it is generally recognised that questions of 
the date, the authorship, the literary character, and the 
historical value of the writings included in the Bible can 
only be satisfactorily dealt with by the exercise of an in- 
formed and disciplined judgment on the data offered, and 
that the answers to these questions reached by this method 
do not affect the significance or influence of the Bible for 
morality and religion. This statement does require some 
qualification. The literary character and the historical 
value of the writings does affect Christian faith in so far 
as the historical reality of the progressive revelation, and 
especially of the revealing Person of Jesus Christ, may be 
brought into doubt or question by these inquiries. If 
God did not reveal Himself in the Hebrew nation in His 


1 See the Life of William Robertson Smith, by Black and Chrystal. 


II.] RELIGION AND REVELATION 43 


providence and by His prophets, and if the Word of God 
was not incarnate in Jesus Christ as a person who lived and 
taught, died and rose again, as the Gospels testify and the 
apostolic writings conceive Him to have done, then un- 
doubtedly the object of Christian faith is lost. This con- 
clusion does not,’ however, necessarily follow from the 
Higher Criticism, although two assumptions which often 
aecompany-the application of the principle do lead in this 
‘direction. The first assumption is that whatever savours 
of the supernatural in the records must be denied, or 
explained away. This assumption is indeed made quite 
explicit in the second principle of the religious-historical 
_ method, that criticism must be followed by correlation, 


that is, for all events, teachings, and persons the historical™ 


_ antecedents must be discovered ; in other words, any cause 
* outside of or beyond the historical succession must be 
ignored. How far this demand is legitimate we shall in 
the next paragraph inquire; but at this point it must be 
emphasised that literary and historical criticism by itself 
does not necessarily lead to any so negative conclusion. 
The second assumption, closely connected with the first, is 
- that, as the writers in the Bible do record the supernatural, 
in so doing they display their credulity, and so, even when 
recording the natural, must be treated with suspicion as 
more likely to fall into error than to follow after truth. 
Ancient histories generally are held to be untrustworthy. 
‘In place of external fact of history,’ says Dr. Percy 
Gardner, ‘ we have in the last resort psychological fact as 
to what was believed to have taken place.’ The modern 
critic accordingly often claims sovereign freedom in dealing 
with those ancient authorities for past history. He rejects 
this statement, and selects that ; he combines his data as 
seems good in his own eyes; he reconstructs the history so 
that it becomes entirely different from what it was in the 
original sources. One may urge that the opposite course 
is more likely to lead to truth ; neither credulity nor sus- 
picion, but acceptance of what is credible and intelligible 


1 A Historic View of the New Testament, p. 8. 


— 


44 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [cu. 


to begin with, and from that standpoint a judgment of the 
trustworthiness of the writer as a whole, inviting at least 
suspense of judgment regarding what in his record seems 
at first improbable. However strongly some higher 
critics assert their objectivity, one cannot escape the im- 
pression that their judgment is subjective as affected by 
these two assumptions. In the fourth chapter, dealing 
with the historical reality of Jesus Christ, it will be neces- 
sary to go into this matter more fully. To this general 
discussion of the Higher Criticism one consideration may 
here be added. Before assuming that the writers in the 
Bible must be as untrustworthy as ancient historians are 
by many critics assumed to be, it might be worth while 
to ask whether the writers, studied without prejudice, 
do make so unfavourable an impression; whether the 
recorders and the interpreters of a religion that assigned 
so supreme a value to objective certainty and subjective 
sincerity, to truth outward and inward, are likely to have 
been so careless about fact and proof as they are assumed 
to have been ? The probability seems to be all the other 
way. 

(iii) The second principle, already mentioned, must now 
be more fully considered. Christianity, and Jesus Christ 
Himself, must be put into the historical context. The idea 
of evolution, so fruitful in ordering the data of our know- 
ledge in other realms, must be applied here also. Not only 
must all events be caught in the network of causality, but 
all the persons must be explained as far as possible by 
heredity and environment. Beliefs, rites, and customs in 
the Christian Church must all be traced to similar expres- © 
sions of the religious life in Judaism or Paganism. Origin- 
ality must be minimised, and continuity must be asserted. 
One cannot be too grateful for what modern scholarship 
is doing for the reconstruction of our knowledge of the 
world into which Christianity came. It is no interest of , 
Christian faith to represent Christ as unrelated to the 
religious thought and life of His age, for it holds that He 
came in ‘the fulness of the times’ (Gal. iv. 4), and that 


II.| RELIGION AND REVELATION 45 


' the preparatio evangelica was much wider than Judaism. 
The view of religion and of revelation here advocated 
enables us to estimate on their own merits the language 
and even the thought said to be borrowed by the writers 
of the New Testament from Jewish or Pagan sources; it 
is not necessarily false because of its source, as it is not 
_ necessarily true because of the use made of it. It is quite 
' intelligible that the thought and language-forms of a 
» religion claiming universality should be derived from 
" many sources, while the forms do not fully account for the 
new content now given to them. So far the application 
of the principle of correlation is not only permissible, but in 
the highest degree desirable ; what we must guard against is 
excess. When the teaching of Jesus is reduced to a mosaic 
- of Jewish thoughts, we have the mechanical idea of evolu- 
tion, which has proved inadequate even in the realm of 
Nature, applied to a realm where it is altogether out of 
place. The scientific conception of causality is an exact 
equivalence between antecedents and consequents, but it 
excludes just that conception of power that accounts for 
change. Still less capable is it accounting for progress. 
Evolution is being conceived to-day quite differently : the 
state of the universe to-day is not the exact equivalent of 
its state yesterday ; there is constant movement, change, 
- and advance. Evolution must be thought of as epigenesis ; 
~ new factors and fresh features emerge. Life is not merely 
the equivalent of chemical and physical changes. Thought 
is not only the resultant of brain processes. So in history 
there is originality as well as continuity. Even the genius 
is not reducible to his heredity and environment. We have 
no adequate data for determining the limits of variability 
in even human personality ; still less does the idea of 
evolution, which is a description of the creative process, 
fix the bounds within which the creating power that is in 
the creative process must be confined. Bergson’s concep- 
tion of creative evolution marks a departure in thought, and 
carries us beyond the mechanical view, which, while being 
discarded in science, still survives in some of the applica- 


46 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS [CH. 


tions of this second principle of the religious-historical 
method. 

(iv) The third principle of the method is comparison, and 
the assertion of it is due to the recognition of the interest 
and importance of the comparative study of religion. In 
the beliefs, rites, and customs of Christianity, where con- 
nection with other religions cannot be established, such 
resemblances must be sought for as will justify the asser- 
tion that this religion is not unique, but only one of the 
many expressions of man’s religious spirit displaying its 
common features. The unity of mankind is undoubtedly 
displayed in religion; and we can only welcome all the 
evidence that can be found to illustrate that unity. 
Christian theology will be greatly enriched, if it abandons 
the ‘insular’ policy, and adopts the ‘continental Sait 
instead of considering doctrine only as presented in the Holy 
Scriptures, it will seek all the light that the working of the 
human mind on these ultimate problems in other religions 
can throw upon them. Against the principle of com- 
parison there is no objection. But there is a wrong and a 
right application of it. It is curious to discover how old 
errors reappear as new truths. The elder dogmaticians 
are blamed for collecting the proofs for a doctrine from 
the whole range of Scripture, detaching texts from their 
contexts, and so imposing on them a meaning other than 
the original. But exactly the same fault can be charged 
against those scholars who gather together from all the 
religions, savage or cultured, all the features of thought 
or life which appear to have some resemblance. A closer 
study of each instance in its own context of history and 
society would often reveal that the resemblance is apparent 
only. Just as faith does not mean exactly the same 
mental condition in James, Paul, and the author of the 
Kpistle to the Hebrews, so the sacrificial meal of the Aztecs 
is not identical in moral and religious content with, though 
it has superficial resemblances to, the Christian Eucharist. 
It is surely as scientific to distinguish differences as 
to recognise resemblances The comparison of religions 


ona 


aad 


11. ] RELIGION AND REVELATION 47 


should be organic and not.atomic. We really learn nothing 
of the value or the validity of the Christian faith by 
learning that this or that belief, rite, or custom in the 
Christian Church bears resemblance to some feature of 
another religion. Not only does resemblance not prove 


_ derivation, but it does not even show equivalence, moral 


or religious. To assert derivation there must be probable 
historical connection, and not merely conjecture, as in the 
_ attempt to account for the story of the Nativity by Buddhist 


parallels, The Christian religion as a whole in its distinc- 
tive religious disposition and moral character, in its actual 
historical effect, should be compared with the religions as 
a whole which are its rivals. The survivals of animism 
in the popular beliefs within Christendom do not prove 
that Christianity has only the significance and value of a 
savage religion. If we compare Buddhism or Islam as a 
whole with Christianity as a whole, or, still more, Gautama 
or Mohammed in moral character and religious spirit with 
Christ, it is not the likeness, but rather the difference 
requiring to be accounted for which will most impress us. 

(5) The standard of judgment in any comparison of 
religions must be appropriate. It is as religions that they 
must be compared, how far they do realise the end of 
religion ; and as morality is so closely related to religion, 
and becomes more closely related in religious development, 
the comparison cannot ignore their moral influence. It is 
moral and spiritual tests that must be applied. Accord- 
ingly it is a judgment of value that must be pronounced. 
Without entering in any detail into the discussion of this 
thorny theme, in regard to which the writer has been com- 
pelled to defend the Ritschlian school against what he 
regards as the misconceptions of some eminent British 
theologians, the truth in the theory must be insisted on. 
In the realm of morality and religion as in that of art, we 
are concerned with judgments which not only affirm that 
an object is, but also declare what value the object has 


1 See the Ritschlian Theology, second edition, pp. 161-93, and pp. 407-14: 
also the Christian Certainty, pp. 230-78. 


48 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [ca. 


for us, not as affording us a merely subjective gratification, 
but as fulfilling the requirements of an objective ideal of 
beauty, goodness, truth. 

(i) These judgments do not even implicitly deny the 

existence of the object, but assume it; and so there is no 
opposition of judgments of value and judgments of exist- 
ence. Hxistence is assigned to which quality is ascribed. 
Men do not trouble themselves about the value of what 
for them is non-existent. The Ritschlian would not waste 
his labour in showing on what grounds the predicate of 
divinity is assigned to Jesus Christ, if in so doing he in- 
tended to express the belief that Christ is not divine. The 
evidence for the divinity of Christ offered by the Ritschlian 
school may, or may not, be sufficient; the conception of the 
divine held may, or may not, be adequate—neither of these 
questions now concerns us—but that the intention—intelli- 
gent and honest—to confess Christ as divine is not dis- 
proved because the judgment is described as one of value 
is what is here contended for. 
_ (ii) Again, the standard of value is not subjective, but 
objective. Just as no Ritschlian would consider that an 
action was to be judged right because it so pleased the 
moralist to consider and pronounce it, so neither would 
he hold Christ divine merely because it pleases the Christian 
for his own assurance of salvation so to consider Him. 
The need that Christ meets is a real need rooted in the 
reality of both man and his world, and the salvation that 
Christ offers is a real salvation ; and so the divinity ascribed 
to Christ because He offers this real salvation from this 
real need, and makes His offer good, is as real. A merely 
subjective estimate about the person of Christ could not 
guarantee an objective deliverance. 

(ili) It never entered into the mind of Ritschl or any of 
his followers to suppose that the value-judgment gives 
existence to its objects; that Christ’s divinity is consti- 
tuted and not merely recognised by the value-judgment. 
Some of its idealist critics blame Ritschlianism for being a 
historic positivism. Be the charge true or not, it at least 


1. ] RELIGION AND REVELATION 49 


corrects the suggestion that the value-judgments are not 
concerned with reality. The historical reality of the 
revelation of God in Christ is assumed; and the value- 
judgment seeks to show how that reality is apprehended. 
(iv) As the subsequent chapters will show, the writer 
himself is not disposed to use the theory of value-judgments 
as the short cut to Christian certainty. He does not regard 
it on the one hand as a substitute for the necessary historical 
inquiry regarding the reality of the object of Christian 
faith—Jesus Christ—as fact, nor does he treat it, on the 
other, as an escape from the obligation to strive for a 
metaphysic which will give to Christian faith its appropri- 
ate intellectual context ; but he does hold that we must | 
insist that spiritual things are spiritually discerned, that | 
scientific knowledge, and logical understanding, and ° 
speculative reason do not themselves give moral insight 
or spiritual vision. A man must be living the religious life 
to be able to test what is or what is not religious truth. 
We do not take a bad man’s judgment on morals; how 


can the man, indifferent to religion, who has not had the 
_ religious experience of God’s saving grace in Christ, pro- 
- nounce an opinion worth having on the question whether 


ieee ce 


~~ 


God has revealed Himself in Christ in the history that 
prepared for Him, and the history of which He has been 
the source? Whether there is recorded and interpreted in 
the Holy Scriptures the revelation of unique significance, 
supreme value, absolute authority, and final sufficiency, is 
a question which neither historical learning nor philo- 
sophical insight can answer, but only the personal experi- 
ence of God’s coming into contact and communion with 
the soul in Christ. 

(v) This does not mean that men must wait until in some 
mysterious way beyond their control this experience 
becomes theirs. Christianity may, and ought to be, ap- 
proached by the way of historic inquiry, but along this 
path alone what at most can be gained is surely a judgment 
of probability. Weighing the evidence for and against 
the historical reality of Jesus as represented in the gospels, 

D 


50 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS _ [ca. 


a man may reach the conclusion that it is more likely than 
not that Jesus was as He is represented. Christianity 
must not refuse the test of philosophical insight. It has 
been so proved by many minds, and they have reached the 
judgment that it offers a more reasonable world-view on the 
whole than any of its rival theories; but this is at best a 
speculative opinion. A religious comparison may be made 
between Christianity and other faiths, although it is diffi- 
cult here to fix the standard of judgment. One derived 
from Christianity itself begs the question. One drawn 
from some other source may prejudice the inquiry against 
Christianity from the very start. Further, can any religion 
be fully known unless from within ? Suppose the com- 
parison be made, all it can result in is the conclusion that 
Christianity is relatively best. So Troeltsch refuses the 
Christian the right of speaking of Christianity as the 
absolute religion. These all may be ways of approach to 
Christ, and Christian Apologetics must keep them all 
open, and give all the guidance on them it can, but the 
judgment of value which brings assurance to the soul can 
only follow on the faith that finds God’s saving grace in 
Christ. 


1 See The Christian Certainty, pp. 52-7. 


So et Re ae Lae OK 


11.) INSPIRATION AND MIRACLE 51 


CHAPTER III 


INSPIRATION AND MIRACLE 


I 


' (1) In the preceding chapter it has been shown that religion 
is universal in mankind, and necessary to manhood, and 
that religion by its very nature, as a relation of man to God, 
implies the correspondent relation of God to man—revela- 
tion. It has also been argued that the revelation is as 
permanent and universal as the religion to which it corre- 
_ sponds, but that this fact does not exclude the possibility, 
nay, admits the reality, of a unique revelation in which a 
- greater human receptiveness corresponds with a greater 
_ divine communicativeness. In regard to this special 
_ revelation it was further maintained that the legitimate 
application of the religious-historical method to it does not 
disprove its uniqueness ; but that the apprehension of the 
truth and the appreciation of the worth of this special 
revelation involves not only a theoretical judgment but 
__a value-judgment. So far we have not attempted a closer 
analysis of the conception of revelation beyond recognising 
that as religion involvesthe exercise of human personality, so 
does revelation the activity of God in nature and in history. 
How is this activity of God to be conceived? Before we 
try to answer that question, we may ask another: How 
has this activity been conceived ? For it is well here to 
allow speculation to wait on and be guided by experience. 
It has been usual for Christian Apologists to present only 
the biblical doctrine ; but in accordance with the stand- 
point here assumed the writer will examine the testimony 
of religion generally. 
(2) We must go back to the simplest conceptions we can 
reach. 


52 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS — [cs. 


(i) It is generally agreed that all religions have passed 
through the stage of animism in their thought, although 
animism is both less and more than religion: less as only 
the theoretical and not the practical aspect of religion; 
more as not merely religion, but as also science or phil- 
osophy in a rudimentary form. Probably there was even a 
simpler form of thought, which may be called animatism. 
Man felt himself and his world alive before he thought of 
himself as soul inhabiting and controlling body; and of 
natural objects as possessed by, and physical changes as 
due to, soul-like beings. Here we have in germ the dis- 
tinction between material and spiritual, even though the 
spiritual was spoken of in terms of the material ; between the 
phenomenal and the noumenal, between the image and the 
idea. Instead of regarding the subsequent developments 
of this conception as the survivals of savage superstition, 
we may here rather recognise a fundamental necessity of 
human reason, which later knowledge and thought may 
modify so as to bring it into as close accord with the reality 
to be explained as possible, but cannot banish. The things 
seen are related to, dependent on, and controlled by the 
things unseen. When in. the evolution of religious thought 
the spirit becomes the god, he is less confined to, less 
dependent on, the natural object or the physical change. 
Instead of individual spirits, we move on to departmental 
deities. Instead of every tree having its own dryad, there 
is a goddess of vegetation. Within polytheism there is a 
tendency towards monotheism. As on the one hand social 
unity establishes itself in tribe or nation, the worship of 
many spirits tends towards monolatry, the worship of a 
tribal deity. As some sense of the unity of nature develops, 
thinkers at least, even while acquiescing in the popular 
polytheism, seek for some principle of unity, by the presi- 
dency of one god over the others, as of Zeus in Olympus; 
by an abstract conception of the divine, of which the gods 
are manifestations, as the Egyptian nutar ; by a pantheism 
which merges gods and world alike in one existence, as 
Brahma in India; by the definite conception of one personal] 


I. INSPIRATION AND MIRACLE 53 


God in all, through all, and over all, as in the Hebrew 
* ethical monotheism.’ 

(ii) But in this process of thought, while the multiplicity 
tends to be merged in unity, the idea of power is not 
abandoned, only one will or power is substituted for a 
number, and so law and order emerge out of confusion and 
discord. With the growth of the knowledge of the world 
and of self the conception of the divine is profoundly 
modified, but the reality of the divine is no less tenaciously 
maintained. Comte would dismiss this as the lowest state 
of human thought, the theological, which must yield 
_ to the metaphysical, which in turn must give way to the 
positive or scientific. But we must observe at what a 
price Comte purchases his emancipation from the idea of 
the divine. To sacrifice theology he must mutilate science. 
He is compelled to get rid of the metaphysical idea of cause 
even as merely a disguise for the theological idea of God, and 
_ has to shut science into the narrow room of observing and 
classifying the sequences and resemblances of phenomena. 
The spiritual, the noumenal, the idea, the divine, whatever 
term may be used for the Unseen which human thought 
has ever regarded as the explanation of the seen, for him is 
not. Science may restrict itself to sequences, the equiva- 
lence of antecedents and consequents, but in so doing it 
leaves change unexplained ; how a certain set of conditions 
becomes a different set, that is inexplicable without the 
conception of causality, power producing change. 

_ (iti) There is a school of scientific thought which, aban- 
doning mechanical atomism as useless and hopeless as an 
explanation of the universe, has recourse to the principle 
of the transformation of energy. But how are we to 
conceive energy so as to account for its changes of form ? 
The philosophical thinker to-day is driven back to the idea 
that lies in germ in animism. ‘The notion of power,’ 
says George Croom Robertson, ‘in the conception of cause 
is got from our consciousness of being able to put forth 
activity, from our consciousness of volition. . . . Just as, in 
regard to movements of my body, I come to consider them 


54 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [cu. 


as depending on my will, so I come to conceive there is a 
similar “ causal” power determining other movements in 
nature. 1 This is not the sole or even the main reason 
for the belief in God; what we desire to show now is that 
the conception of power immanent in nature, and conceived 
on the analogy of the human will, is one from which even 
modern thought cannot escape. 

(3) How is this power at first conceived ? Jevons seeks 
to show that the spirits in whom man believed were con- 
ceived as supernatural. He maintains that even primitive 
man had the gift of ‘ faith in the uniformity of nature, the 
belief that what has once happened will in similar circum- 
stances happen again,’ for ‘it is a fact of psychology that 
the native tendency of the human mind to believe that 
what has once happened will happen again is so strong that, 
until experience has corrected it, a single occurrence is 
sufficient to create an expectation of recurrence. The child 
to whom you have given sweetmeats once, fully expects 
sweetmeats from you at your next meeting. We may then 
regard it as certain that from the beginning there were 
some sequences of phenomena, some laws which man had 
observed, and the occurrence of which he took as a matter 
of course, and regarded as natural. . . . It was when the 
machinery (of nature) did not produce its usual results 
that he was astonished,’ and ‘ he ascribed the fault to some 
overruling swpernatural power. In fine, where the natural 

“ended, the supernatural began. Laws on which man could 
count, and sequences which he habitually initiated and 
\ controlled, were natural. It was the violation of these 
sequences and the frustration of his expectations by which 
the belief in supernatural power was not created, but was 
first called forth.’ At this point in his argument Jevons 
adds this note: ‘Since writing the above, I find Waitz 
says (Introduction to Anthropology, p. 368) ‘that which 
regularly and periodically recurs passes by unheeded, 
because, being expected and anticipated, he (primitive man) 
is not obstructed in his path,” and that Major Ellis (Z'shs- 


1 Elements of General Philosophy, p. 144. 


II. | INSPIRATION AND MIRACLE 55 


speaking Peoples, p. 21), quoting the passage from Waitz, 
says, “‘ Hence the rising and the setting of the sun and moon, 
the periodical recurrence of the latter, the succession of 
day by night, etc., have excited no speculation in the mind 
of the negro of the Gold Coast. None of the heavenly 
bodies are worshipped ; they are too distant to be selected 
as objects of veneration ; and the very regularity of their 
appearance impresses him less than the evidences of power 
and motion exhibited by rivers, the sea, storms, landslips, 
etc.” ’ 1 It may be questioned whether primitive man at 
the very beginning was capable of such trains of thought ; 
but there need be no doubt that at an early stage of human 
development the difference of the ordinary and the extra- 
ordinary, the expected and unexpected, in nature would 
be recognised. Whether the term supernatural with the 
definite connotation it has acquired in modern thought, 
can be applied with strict accuracy to this sense of the 
unusual may be questioned; but it is true that here we 
may find in germ the subsequent development. As man’s. 
experience has widened, nature has been more fully brought 
within the range of his knowledge, and yet he has never 
quite escaped the presence of the mysterious and inexplic- 
able in his world, the sense of power above and beyond 
what he already knows. - 

(4) Must we assume that this sense of the supernatural , 
is but the shadow of man’s ignorance of the natural, and 
that as the knowledge of the natural expands, the sense of 
the supernatural will contract ? Or is there any other 
alternative for our thought? The writer ventures to 
suggest considerations in support of an alternative, although 
he knows that in so doing he is going against the intel- 
lectual fashions of the age. 

(i) The conception of the extraordinary and unexpected _. 
is not the final or adequate conception of the supernatural 
for religious thought, although it may have been a help to 
the mind by the way. It is characteristic of religion to 
have a sense of dependence on, submission to, and rever- 


1 Introduction to the History of Religion, pp. 17-19. 


56 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS _ [on. 


ence for the divine ; God is thought of as greater, stronger, 
wiser and better than man. He controls the world that 
He inhabits, or, in philosophical terms, He is transcendent 
as well as immanent. 

(ii) If we apply the term natural to describe what is in 
accord with the order of nature, the physical universe, 
man himself is supernatural. If we extend the term 
natural to man to indicate his dependence on heredity 
and environment, the uniformities of disposition, motive, 
habit, conduct and character observable in different men, 
there still remains in every man something that eludes the 
grasp of nature, a freedom that by controlling and direct- 
ing the movements of the body affects changes in nature. 
It might be in accordance with the natural that the charge 
of gunpowder should explode when the spark is applied to 
it, but the movement of the hand that applied the spark, as 
free, could not with strict accuracy be described as merely 
natural. When the natural is limited to the mechanism of 
nature, man’s free action cannot be described as natural 
without an extension of the meaning of the term. But, 
allowing even that man’s free action could be correctly so 
described when his action is marked by the observed uni- 
formities of human conduct, are there not human acts even 
in which the spirit so triumphs over the flesh, conscience 
over impulse or custom, originality over routine, that we 
should feel we were abusing the term by describing them 
as natural? Even in human history we meet with the 
unexpected and inexplicable. 

“ (i) We cannot conceive God’s relation to nature other- 
y wise than on the analogy of the relation of our will to the 
movements of our body. As, in spite of all the sophistry 
of philosophers, we refuse to regard our actions as necessi- 
tated, so must we refuse to think of God’s activity in 
nature as bound and not free. It is true that much of 
our activity is habitual, in compliance with customs 
already fixed. We have formed a certain character, in 
accordance with which, in so far as they know it, others 
will expect us to act. But there may be moral crises, in 


II. ] INSPIRATION AND MIRACLE 57 


which custom does not hold us, and even character does not 
determine our path, but the personality asserts itself in a 
spontaneity and originality which is a surprise to ourselves 
as well as to others. Those who knew Saul the Pharisee 
and the persecutor would never have expected to find him 
in the midst of the Christian community. The writer 
fully recognises the danger of unduly straining the argu- 
ment from analogy, but here it seems to be strengthened 
by the a fortiori argument. If man even is not bound by 
custom and character in his action, how much more is God 
not bound by His habitual method of action, which we call 
the order of nature, since He is both transcendent and_ 
immanent. If we think of nature as a power beside God, 
the supernatural must be conceived as God’s interference 
with, and triumph over, nature. But if we think of God, 
as religion thinks of Him, as constantly and directly active, 
what is the order of nature but His method of action, and 
its uniformity but His constancy; and any apparent 
departure from it, so long as it can be seen to be for higher 
ends, only that originality which we may expect where 
there is liberty ? If men habituate» themselves to think 
in terms of mechanism, the supernatural must appear 
incredible ; if they will think, as the religious man to be’ 
consistent should think, in terms of personality, the super- 
natural will be as credible as the natural, because both 
express divine personal liberty. A man’s character does / 
not suffer from his exceptionalaction in a crisis, and the new, — 
morally and religiously, takes up into itself the old; so 
God’s supernatural action need not be conceived as inter- 
fering with or disturbing His natural activity, for in both 
there is the unity of one and the same will. There is a 
latent atheism in much of the denial of the supernatural in 
contemporary thought. 

(iv) The theory of evolution is now generally accepted ; 
but there is a false and a true conception of evolution, the 
one contradictory of, and the other consistent with, re-_ 
ligion and its necessary belief in God. The mechanical 
view of evolution, as it is presented to us in Herbert 


58 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [cu. 


Spencer’s ‘synthetic philosophy,’ is false, and can be 
shown to be false even as an explanation of the world. 
Mental can be resolved into organic processes as their 
equivalents, and organic into chemical or physical pro- 
cesses only by ignoring the differences. Mind transcends, 
and is not the equivalent of life, and so life transcends and 
is not the equivalent of matter. In the process of evolution 
the new emerges, and takes its place with the old, and is 
not merely a disguised repetition of the old. Evolution 
is epigenesis.1 In the language of religion there are divine 
initiatives as well as divine constancy. If then at each 
stage of the evolution nature was receptive of this divine 
initiative, why need it be supposed that at the present 
stage of evolution there can be no divine initiatives, and 
that if there were, the order of nature must needs be dis- 
turbed by them? Mr. Bergson has so far avoided any 
theistic interpretation of his idea of Creative Evolution. 
This idea, however, is not his individual speculation ; it is 
based on scientific knowledge, and is a response to a widely- 
felt demand for a more adequate conception of evolution 
than the mechanical. In so far as it is true, it strengthens 
the view here maintained that God’s action is free because 
progressive? 

(v) The recognition of evolution, and of progress in 


1 See Ward’s Naturalism and Agnosticism and The Realm of Ends for 
the best discussion of this problem. 

2 The writer does not feel any need of altering or withdrawing the above 
argument in view of the expression by the President of the British Associa- 
tion of the expectation that life would yet be produced artificially in the 
laboratory out of the non-living ; for (1) this is but a conjecture, to which a 
school of biologists, the vitalists, is still opposed ; (2) the mechanical view 
of evolution so obsesses the minds of many eminent men of science that here 
the wish may be regarded as father to the thought; (3) even if living 
substance could be produced by chemical combinations under physical 
conditions, discoverable by the man of science, the difference between the 
living and non-living would not thereby be abolished, for both the qualities 
and the behaviour of the one are so different from those of the other, that 
the emergence of life in the world would mark a fresh stage of the evolution ; 
(4) if life were produced artificially in the laboratory, it would be by a mind 
knowing and effecting the necessary chemical combinations and physical 
conditions: and, therefore, unless we assume the irrational view that chance 
effected in the beginning what science is still trying to effect, a purposing 
mind and performing will must be assumed. Thus life conta still be 
regarded as due to a divine initiative in the process of evolution. 


III. | INSPIRATION AND MIRACLE 59 


evolution, removes an objection to the admission of the 
supernatural which was rooted in the static view of the 
world. If the world were thought of as a finished article, 
displaying in its arrangement finally and adequately the 
wisdom and goodness of its Maker, as the deists thought of 
it, the natural would set the limits to the exercise of both 
divine attributes; and any fresh departure must seem 
incredible. But admit the conception of progress, then no 
stage can be regarded as 80 finally and adequately expres- 
sing the whole mind and will of God that any new expression 
would appear incredible. If man. marks the goal of 
animal evolution, mankind is undergoing a process of 
mental, moral, and religious evolution. It is character- 
istic of religion not to be content with reality as it is, but 
to aspire to the ideal. The real, the pious spirit feels, 
conceals as well as reveals God. Faith is the assurance of 
things hoped for, as well as the proving of things not seen 
(Heb. xi.). Recognising God both in nature and provi- 
dence, faith nevertheless begets the hope of the kingdom 
of God, the perfect manifestation of God in the world and 
man. For in nature there is physical evil—pain ; and in 
history there is moral evil—sin; and the religious con- 
sciousness and moral conscience reinforce one another in 
the demand and expectation that God’s power and wisdom, 
serving His goodness, will bring the deliverance from both. 
The idealism which pretends that all the real is the rational, 
or the optimism that assumes the actual world the best 
possible, is neither religious nor moral. The world, as we 
know it, is not so perfect as to exclude the possibility of 
the divine wisdom and goodness being more distinctly 
and directly expressed through the divine power than we 
now see in the natural order. 

(vi) In Christianity and the Hebrew religion which pre- 
pared for it we have a special revelation, as was shown in 
the preceding chapters. It is a progressive revelation, not ~ 
merely in ideas and ideals through a succession of teachers, 
but in the discipline and development of a people in a 
history with a goal in the person of Jesus Christ revealing 


60 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS [CH. 


the highest idea of God, and realising the best ideal of man- 
hood ever given toman. In the preparatory history there 
was the hope of salvation, and through Christ the hope was 
transformed into the experience, for believers in Him, of 
forgiveness and renewal as children of God. This revela- 
_, tion is redemptive, delivering man from sin, and therewith 
assuring him of deliverance from evil. The Christian 
still hopes for the perfect manifestation of the kingdom of 
God, the fulfilment of God’s purpose, of which he has 
already the pledge in his own salvation in Christ. It does 
not seem at all irrational from this point of view to believe 
that God, acting freely in nature, should even in the existing 
order give pledges of that higher order, not only in the 
forgiveness of sin, but in deliverances from evil and bestow- 
ments of good, inexplicable from the knowledge we have of 
that lower order as it now is. 

(5) So far we have been endeavouring to develop the 
conception of God’s free, progressive, redemptive action 
in nature, which, relatively to our present knowledge of 
the order of nature, and as inexplicable by it, may be 
described as supernatural. But how does man conceive 
God.as_related to himself ? In dealing with the concep- 
tion of religion in the previous chapter, the writer insisted 
that the emotional and the practical as well as the intel- | 
lectual element must be recognised. Mythology on the. 
one hand, or prayer and sacrifice on the other, do not 
constitute religion, unless there be emotion and the sense 
of the presence and power of the divine. There is piety 
only when the divine is felt to be inhabiting and possessing 
not only the world around, but the self also. This element 
in religion has been so well described by R. Otto, that his 
words may be quoted in full: ‘ From its beginning religion 
‘is the experience of the mysterious, and the attraction and 
inclination to the mysterious, an experience of the same, 
which breaks through out of the depths of the life of feel- 
ing, when externally stimulated and occasioned, as the 
feeling of the supersensible. But once aroused it becomes 
one of the mightiest impulses of the human race, which 


III. } INSPIRATION AND MIRACLE 61 


impels it to a strange and confused history, which tosses it 
about in what is most grotesque and extraordinary, and 
yet drives it onward to the pure and the clear. It is an 
impulse of demonic power which is not explained by the 
reflex actions of spontaneous products of the phantasy 
and their imagined values, but which sets itself free out of 
the region of the most elemental, although quite obscure 
representation, most secret knowledge, and at the same 
time most potent interest. And thus alone can be under- 
stood its incomprehensible potency over generations and 
peoples. Without assuming this impulse, and the feeling 
supporting it, the history of religion cannot be written. 
It would be a geometry without space. It would be as if 
one were to busy oneself with writing a history of music 
while denying an independent musical feeling, and a 
peculiar musical endowment with the constant labour of 
interpreting its manifestations as a kind of athletics or 
gymnastic practice.’! Troeltsch, too, recognises that 
religion as real implies a contact of the human with the 
divine,? and in the lower forms of religion this contact is 
experienced in an emotional disturbance, in an excitement 


which passes into an ecstasy or frenzy.? God as the super-_ 
natural is recognised in nature in miracle, and within man 


in inspiration ; the immanence of God which, as not bounded 
by the recognised natural order or the usual mental pro- 


cesses, gives indications of His transcendence, is represented 


in these two forms, outward and inward. Having en- 
deavoured to define and justify these conceptions in general 
terms, we must now confine ourselves to the biblical repre- 
sentation. 


It 


(1) The word inspiration itself (inspiro, to breathe into) 
is an instance of the description of mental processes by 
physical analogies. As the breath is drawn into the lungs 

1 Theologische Rundschau, 1910, p. 305. 

2 See The Christian Certainty, p. 52, for a fuller statement of his view. 


8 See Encyclopedia Britannica, article on ‘Inspiration,’ for instances in 
the lower forms of religion. 


62 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS _ [ca. 


so the human spirit receives the divine. The same idea ia 
in the Greek word Ocorvevotia. As clearly is the divine 
presence in and possession of the human indicated in the 
word évOoveracpds. The belief that God can dwell and 
speak or work in man is almost universal, and many 
instances from faiths scattered all over the world could 
be given, but we must here confine ourselves to the doctrine 
of the Holy Scriptures.1. The crowning glory of the 
Hebrew history is the succession of prophets ; but even in 
Israel prophecy had a lowly beginning in abnormal phe- 
nomena similar to those found in other religions. Saul 
treats Samuel as a soothsayer, and seeks to buy guidance 
for his journey from him (1 Samuel ix. 8) ; and when Saul 
is himself found among the prophets, it is a religious frenzy 
that has seized him, shown probably by violent gestures 
and inarticulate cries, owing to contact with the bands 
of enthusiasts for Jehovah and Israel, who were going about 
the land seeking to arouse the piety and the patriotism 
of the people (x. 10-13). At Pentecost there was a religious 
revival of exceptional intensity, and accompanied by 
abnormal features (Acts ii. 1-13), such as the speaking with 
tongues, which the author or his source misunderstands as 
using foreign languages (ver. 8), yet which Paul accurately 
describes as an unintelligible rush of sounds, expressive 
of intense feeling, but needing to be interpreted (1 Cor. 
xiv. 27). Similar phenomena characterised Montanism, 
appeared at Wittenberg in Luther’s absence, accompanied 
in some places the work of Wesley during the Evangelical 
Revival, and were witnessed in the Scottish Revival of 
1860, and the Welsh of 1905-6. These features may be all 
_psychologically explicable as abnormal phenomena; what 
does give them religious significance is that there is such an 
overmastering sense of the divine that not only is there 
such emotional disturbance, but in many cases personal 
conversion from sin to God. The invisible, the eternal, the 
divine becomes a reality for the soul: the writer at least 
cannot dismiss such experiences as wholly illusive. 


1 See Macculloch’s Comparative Theology, chap. xv. 


—e Soe 


(1. ] INSPIRATION AND MIRACLE 63 


(2) The succession of prophets, whose writings have 
come down to us, and who were the agents of the progres- 
sive divine revelation in the Hebrew nation, stands at a 


higher stage of relation to, communion with, and com- 
- munication from God than that marked by such emotional 


disturbance.! From their own records it appears that in 


a state of religious exaltation they saw visions and heard 


voices; but this mode of divine manifestation was not 


- distinctive of them. Their inspiration, in virtue of which 
- they with authority declared God’s mind and will in mercy 


or judgment on His people, came to them generally in the 
full exercise of their normal faculties. In their personal 
intimacy with Jehovah they came to understand His 
character and purpose as their fellow-countrymen, includ- 
ing the false prophets, failed to do. They were convinced 
that the history of the nation was directed and controlled 


by God’s providence. By moral insight and spiritual 
' discernment they were enabled to discover both the con- 
dition of the people and the intention of God in relation 
thereto. But they always claim to speak God’s revealed 


word, and not merely their own clever opinions or shrewd 
guesses. Their interest was withdrawn from the outer 
world, and their attention was concentrated on their own 
inner life, and it was under these conditions that intuitions 
of what God would speak and do arose in their conscious- 
ness with a certainty and an authority which for themselves 
as well as the people warranted their beginning their dis- 
courses with such words as ‘Thus saith the Lord.’ As their 
declaration of the divine mind and will concerned the future 
as well as the present, as denunciation of sin was enforced 
by threats of coming judgment, and as calls to penitence 
were confirmed by promises of speedy deliverance, prophecy 
as practical preaching necessarily involved prediction. 
While it is a mistake to regard this as the distinctive 
feature of prophecy, as Christian theologians used to do, 
there is just as little warrant in the records for ignoring it 
as unessential to the work of a prophet. Only by critical 


1 See Hastings’ Bible Dictionary, article on ‘ Prophecy,’ vol. iv. pp. 106 ff. 


64. A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS _ [cu. 


violence can we get rid of the authentic instances of fore- — 
telling in the prophetic writings. Amos and Hosea foretold 
the fall of Samaria in 722; Isaiah the deliverance of 
Jerusalem in 701 ; Jeremiah the overthrow of the kingdom 
of Judah in 586, and the unnamed prophet, called by the 
critics Deutero-Isaiah, the return from exile in 537. Unless 
the prophets are either deceived or deceivers, they were 
conscious that the future was unveiled to them, not by 
their own political sagacity, but by God’s own illumination. 
That enlightenment, it is probable, came to them by way 
of, and not apart from, their moral insight and spiritual 
discernment. ‘They did interpret outward events by what 
they knew of God and His purpose; but what gave cer- 
tainty and authority to all the activities of their own mind 
and soul was their constant sense of God with and in them. 
It does not seem to the writer at all incredible or unintel- 
ligible that a sure foresight should accompany a clear 
insight, and that intimacy with God should make possible 
an anticipation of the course of the fulfilment of His purpose. 
Be it observed that prediction was conditional; impeni- 
tence was threatened with judgment, and penitence was 
assured of mercy; and thus in this connection there does 
not emerge the problem of the relation of the divine fore- 
knowledge to human freedom. . We must avoid on the one 
hand an extreme supernaturalism which ignores the human 
mediation of divine revelation, and on the other the not 
less extreme naturalism which sees only human activity 
in morality and religion, and excludes divine action. 
Unless we are prepared to declare that God cannot com- 
mune and communicate with man, we have no ground for 
denying the claim the prophets made for themselves. 

(3) As has already been indicated, the Apostolic Church 
was ‘ filled with the Holy Ghost,’ marked by a holy enthusi- 
asm, a sacred inspiration. The abnormal features which 
are met with elsewhere in religious revival are not absent, 
and are not depreciated by the writers of the New Testa- 
ment. But inspiration in a higher form is the mark of the 
Christian life. The believer is represented in the New 


III. | INSPIRATION AND MIRACLE 65 


Testament as in intimate communion with God in Christ, 
and, therefore, as permanently and potently possessed by 
the Spirit of God. Not a temporary exaltation of the 
religious emotions, but a permanent transformation of the 
inner life—the mind enlightened by God’s truth, the heart 
quickened by God’s love, the will renewed by God’s grace— 
is the characteristic operation of the Spirit of God. As in 
the Incarnation, human personality becomes the perfect 
organ of God’s own life, so in the measure of the contact 
of human faith with divine grace in Jesus Christ does 
human life become inspired. Whoever is Christ’s, has 
the Spirit of Christ. Whenever in the course of its history 
Christianity has become traditional, conventional, formal, 
acceptance of a creed, observance of a ritual, submission 
to a code, the Christian life has ceased to be so inspired, and 
dependence on priest and sacrament has taken the place 
of communion with God in Christ, and so communication 
of His Spirit to man. But whenever religion has again 
become genuine personal faith, this inspiration has also 
become real. Faith in Christ is followed by the experi- 
ence of the Spirit’s presence and power. 

(4) It is sometimes maintained that we must distinguish 
the apostolic inspiration from the inspiration of believers 
in the Apostolic Age. For their special office it is argued 
that they must have possessed a peculiar endowment, 
which gives to their interpretation of the person and work 
of Christ, as preserved in the New Testament, a final 
authority for Christian faith. The writer believes that in 
a personal, moral, and spiritual religion, as Christianity is, 
the term office is quite inappropriate. A vocation, as 
expressive of personal qualification and consecration, may 
be recognised ; as in a body there are many members, and 
all have not the same function (zpaéis, Rom. xii. 4). It 
is the gift possessed that determines the ministry exercised, 
not the appointment that secures the endowment. We 
must accordingly conceive the apostolic inspiration as the 
common Christian inspiration raised to a higher power in 
’ the measure of the clearer vision of, closer communion with, 

E 


Crraxay 


66 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [cu. 


' 


and fuller consecration to Christ as Saviour and Lord. — 
Paul could claim to have the mind of Christ, not because ~ 
Peter, John, and James had given him the right hand of © 


fellowship (Gal. ii. 9), but because having been crucified 
and having risen with Christ, to him to live was Christ 


(Rom. vi. 5, Phil. i. 21). Paul’s writings have a significance — 


and value for us such as no writings outside of the New 
Testament have, because he was so fully and thoroughly 
Christ’s. Applying only moral and religious tests, the 
writings of the New Testament indicate that the age which 
was in most immediate contact with the historical reality 
of Jesus Christ experienced the presence and power of the 


Holy Spirit as no other subsequent age has. This may ~ 


have been partly due to the separation of the Church from 
the world, and its consecration unto Christ. But who can 
measure how much personal intimacy with the Incarnate 
Word, or those who had enjoyed that privilege, may have 
conditioned personal inspiration? Who can deny that 


the divine purpose in Christ may have included provision — 


of the means for the preservation and diffusion of the 
impression which the historical reality of Jesus made on 
sensitive and responsive souls? This, however, must be 
insisted on, that the inspiration of the New Testament 
writings is not due to the mysterious endowment of a few 
choice souls, but must be traced to the inspired life of 
Christian believers of greater or less intensity according to 
the moral and religious condition. If the Church of Christ 
to-day were as a whole cleansed and renewed, so that a 
like receptivity for the divine truth and grace were secured, 
who can doubt that the divine activity in the presence and 
power of the Spirit of God in man would once more be made 
manifest ? For the writer at least it is impossible to hold 
any other view than that God, as revealed in Christ, is love, 
that is, is self-communicative; so that for those who receive 
that revelation, and in the measure in which they receive 
it, there is not only communion with God, but a communi- 
cation from God of His own life of truth and grace. Accords 
ing to faith, so is the inspiration of the Christian life. 


I1.] INSPIRATION AND MIRACLE 67 


(5) The Christian Church has claimed inspiration for the 
whole Bible, even as other religions have for their sacred 
scriptures. The most extravagant claims Christian theo- 
logians have made have been exceeded in Judaism, Islam, 
and Brahmanism. It is not necessary here to trace the 
process by which first the Canon of the Old Testament and 
then that of the New was formed; to all the writings 
included inspiration was assigned. [first ascribed to 
persons in abnormal states of religious exaltation, then to 
the prophets as Jehovah’s messengers, inspiration was at 
last transferred to these writings. The New Testament 
affirms the inspiration of the Old,! and the constant use 
confirms the claim. The writers of the New Testament 
shared the views of contemporary Judaism. Weber 


- summarises the teaching of the Talmud in the words, ‘ The 


holy scripture came to be through the inspiration of the 
Holy Spirit, has its origin in God Himself, who speaks in 
it.’ It is not necessary to discuss the various theories of 
inspiration which have been at various times current in the 
Christian Church, as it is no part of the task of Christian 
Apologetics to maintain, defend, or commend these to the 
modern mind. We must try to state the doctrine in such 
a way as will make it appear intelligible and credible to- 
day. We cannot assert that the inspiration of the Bible 
means its inerrancy in matters of common knowledge ; 
its science is the popular contemporary opinion; its 
history is of varying trustworthiness, as it rests, or does not, 
on contemporary oral traditions or written sources ; even 
as regards doctrine and morals there is a distinct progress 
recorded in the Old Testament, the later stages correcting 
the earlier ; and the entire Old Testament idea of God and 
ideal for man are transcended, while fulfilled in the sense 
of completion in the New Testament. Only mischief has 
resulted from the attempt to treat Old Testament theology 
or ethics as finally authoritative in the Christian Church. 
Even in the New Testament the divine inspiration is con- 


1 Matt. i. 22, xv. 4; Mark xii. 36; Acts i. 16; Rom. iii. 2, ix. 25; 
2 Tim. iii. 16; Heb. i. 1; 1 Peter i. 11, iv. 11; 2 Peteri. 21. 


68 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS _ [ca. 


ditioned by the receptivity and responsiveness of the 
human recipient. Thus degrees of inspiration must be 
recognised ; but the distinction must be made objectively 
rather than subjectively. We cannot measure inspiration 
by psychic states. The nearer any human personality 
stands to the progressive purpose of God fulfilled in Christ, 
the higher we may pronounce the inspiration to be. 
Accordingly we may expect in one kind of literature a 
fuller inspiration than in another. The prophet or the 
apostle is the human agent of divine revelation, and for 
his vocation he is more fully inspired than is, or need be, 
the historian, who records the dealings of God with the 
Hebrew nation, or the experiences of the Christian Church, 
or who transmits the tradition in the primitive Christian 
community of the teaching and works of Jesus. To the 
divine revelation as historical, the records in 1 and 2 
Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, in the Gospels and the Acts are of 
primary importance; but the writers personally do not 
display the same degree of inspiration as do prophets or 
apostles, or supremely Christ, as standing in personal 
communion with God, and as receiving personal communi- 
cations of truth and grace from God. In so far as the 
_ historians are moved by a religious purpose, and have 
themselves been influenced by the revelation they record, 
they are also inspired. But inspiration is always a con- 
dition of the soul in relation to God, and can be ascribed to 
writings only as this condition finds an expression in them. 
_The closer the intimacy, the greater the submission, the 
/ deeper the devotion, the fuller is the inspiration. And in 
the measure in which a man himself has this same life in 
God, will he appreciate the inspiration of which the Holy 
Scriptures are the literary channel. The writer cannot 
more fitly close this discussion than in the words of a 
pioneer of the Higher Criticism, the late William Robert- 
son Smith: ‘God’s dealings with His people were always 
personal, What His prophets and apostles spoke, they 
spoke because by the Spirit they understood, and would 
have others to understand, how God was dealing with man. 


WII.) INSPIRATION AND MIRACLE 69 


_ And if we possess the same spirit, we too shall understand 


the Word so soon as we place ourselves in the historical 
position of the first hearers.’ ‘ We are to seek in the Bible, 
not a body of abstract religious truth, but the living per- 


_ sonal history of God’s gracious dealings with men from age 


to age, till at length in Christ’s historical work the face of 

the Eternal is fully revealed, and we by faith can enter 

into the fullest and freest fellowship with an incarnate God.’ ! 
Ii 


(1) Miracle may be distinguished from inspiration as an 


' outward sensible event from an inward moral or spiritual 


change. It is true that conversion is sometimes described 
as a miracle ; but it is convenient to distinguish the super- 
natural action of God in these two aspects, subjective in 
human experience and objective in the natural order. In 
the previous section we have discussed the place of inspira- 
tion in the special divine revelation ; now we must con- 
sider more closely the function of miracle. As the words 
of William Robertson Smith, just quoted, show, God’s 
dealing with men, while personal, was not merely indi- 
vidual, but historical. He dealt with a nation and for a 
nation through chosen persons, who were the interpreters 
of the course of national history. From the beginning to 
the end of the history of the elect nation, there is a recog- 
nition of God’s providence guiding and guarding, chastising 
or delivering His people in the course of outward events. 
In the previous chapter it has been urged that such a 
divine providence is both credible and intelligible for any 
believer in a God in all, through all, and over all. This 
providence is not usually manifested in events which need 
to be described as miraculous. God is active in the pro- 
cesses of nature and the progress of history, and fulfils His 
purpose in both. The miracles, in the strict sense of the 
word, recorded in the Old Testament, are almost wholly 
confined to the record of the Exodus and the story of. 


1 Lectures and Essays, pp. 229-31. For a fuller discussion from a more 


_ conservative standpoint see Orr's Revelation and Inspiration. 


70 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [cu. 


Elijah and Elisha. We cannot claim that as regards the | 
first we have any contemporary record, as it is agreed that — 
the sources even of the Pentateuch are of much later date. © 
As regards the second, the compiler of the Book of Kings © 
has evidently, without any verification, incorporated in his — 
narrative current popular traditions. It has been main- 
tained that the series of events connected with the Exodus — 
need not be regarded as supernatural, but may be explained © 
as natural occurrences, the extraordinary feature of which 
is their coincidence with the prophetic declaration. Such | 
foresight has been shown to be a mark of the prophetic | 
endowment. The character of the miracles assigned to | 
Elijah and Elisha is not such as to inspire our confidence in — 
the popular traditions through which the record has come 
to us; and we cannot regard them as essential to the 
prophetic ministry, and as necessary constituents of the 
divine revelation. Here even the most convinced believer 
in miracles may be content to exercise a suspense of judg- | 
ment. A prosaic misunderstanding of poetic hyperbole 
accounts for the alleged standing-still of the sun in Gibeon ~ 
(Joshua x. 12-14); some unusual refraction of the sun’s — 
rays may be the natural occurrence to be detected behind ~ 
the record about Ahaz’s sundial (2 Kings xx. 11); subjective © 
scruples, fears, doubts may be objectified in the speech of 
Balaam’s ass (Num. xxii. 27 ff.). In these cases even the © 
acceptance of the narrative as historical does not necessi- 
tate the admission of a miracle. The modern view, both 
of the Book of Jonah and of the Book of Daniel, relieves the 
scholar of any need of explaining the supernatural features. 
Apart then from the progressive revelation of God to the 
elect nation, through His providence in the history and His 
inspiration in the prophets, the Old Testament does not | 
force on us the problem of miracle. 

(2) But in the New Testament the problem cannot be 
evaded. According to the records the ministry of Jesus — 
was marked from its beginning to its close by miracles, and 
His entrance into and exit from earthly life alike were 
miraculous. In His healing ministry all manner of diseases 


11. ] INSPIRATION AND MIRACLE 71 


were healed; not only were the demoniacs restored to 
soundness of mind, the lepers cleansed, the paralysed 
enabled to move, the lost senses given back to the blind 
and the deaf, but even the dead were raised. Other extra- 
ordinary acts, such as the stilling of the storm, the feeding 


_ of five thousand and four thousand, the walking on the 
sea, the change of water into wine, are ascribed to Him. 
It is usual to distinguish these Natwre miracles from those > 


of Healing. These acts are presented in the records as 
extraordinary acts ; and in this respect Christ is contrasted 
with John the Baptist, who wrought no miracle (John x. 41). 
None is regarded as a natural occurrence, and the wonder 
excited by them is frequently mentioned. But, on the 
other hand, these acts are represented as altogether con- 
gruous with His Person, His Mission, and His Message. 
He is Himself supernatural in His sinless, perfect, moral 
character, and in His religious consciousness of repre- 
senting God to man as Messiah and Son of God. 
Can we to-day maintain our belief in the miracles of 
Jesus ? 

(i) It seems plausible, if we take one narrative after 
another and exercise our ingenuity upon it, to reduce it to 
an account of a natural occurrence; but if we take the 
record as a whole, if we allow ourselves to be impressed by 
the total reality of what Christ both was and did, the story 
will appear to us as harmonious in all its parts. The acts 
of Jesus were beneficent, for the one apparent exception, 
the blasting of the fig-tree (Matt. xxi. 19), may be regarded 
as a symbolic prophetic act with the gracious purpose of 
warning the disciples of the impending doom over impeni- 
tent Israel. As beneficent in healing disease, delivering 
from danger, a:id relieving need, they were altogether 
congruous with His function as Saviour of men; they were 
signs and seals of man’s redemption from sin and evil ; 
and thus were not primarily credentials of His mission, 
but only secondarily so as constituents of that mission to 
reveal God, not only as enlightening truth, but as saving 
grace. Had these acts not been included in His work He 


72 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS [cn — 


would not have wrought them, for His meat was to do His 
Father’s will (John iv. 34). 


(ii) He refused as a temptation the use of His super- — 


natural power to further His own interests, or to assert His 


claims (Matt. iv. 1-11); and He would not overcome un- © 


belief by any display of that power (xvi. 4). While He 


condemned the unbelief that resisted even the evidence of — 


His mission which His works offered, He deprecated the 
faith in Himself that rested on no other grounds (John iv. 
48). The cure of the paralytic is not an exception; for 
the sole purpose of the act was not to prove His right to 
forgive sin (Matt. ix. 6), but the cure of disease was His 
proper work, and the lower gift was needed by the sufferer 


to assure him against the challenge offered by the foes of — 


Christ, of the reality of his forgiveness. The miracles were 
seals, credentials, because they were signs, constituents of 
His mission. If the evangelists were credulously trans- 
mitting myths and legends, how is it that they so emphasise 


this aspect of the ministry, so uncongenial to the mere — 


wonder-seeker ? 


(iii) How deeply rooted the miracles are in Jesus’ spiritual — 


purpose is surely evident from the close connection with 
faith which is always insisted on. Not only was faith 
required in the recipients of benefit, or their intercessors ; 
not only did unbelief restrain His mighty works, as at 
Nazareth (Matt. xiii. 58), but Jesus Himself was conscious 
of the exercise of faith in God, expressed in prayer (John 
xi. 41, 42). He ever thought of God as the God of grace, 
whose almighty power was available to heal, deliver, save, 
and bless men through Him on the one condition of human 
receptivity to this divine communicativeness. Had Jesus 
not claimed and used that divine power, as He did in His 


‘ 


miracles, He would have proved Himself inconsistent with — 


His own view of God and man’s relation to God. 

(iv) He was moved with compassion for man’s needs, 
sorrows, sins, but had His pity been powerless to relieve 
and rescue, not only would His love have been His torture, 
but His confidence in God as Father would have been too 


1. ] INSPIRATION AND MIRACLE 73 


sorely tried by the withholding of God’s power to save and 
bless as His love, interpreting God’s heart, willed. These 
considerations show that the miracles of Jesus are not 
excrescences which can be easily removed, and leave the 
revelation of God and redemption of man unchanged in 
character and in scope; but on the contrary, to the writer 
at least, a Christ who being Son of God, and seeking to 
become Saviour of men, wrought no miracle, would be less 
intelligible and credible than the Jesus whom the moreely 
records so consistently present to us. 

(3) Another set of considerations bearing on the question 
affects the trustworthiness of the Gospels. 

(i) Just as the miracles are harmonious with the presenta- 
tion of Christ in the Gospels, so even the narratives are so 
built into the structure of the books that, when we remove 
every story of a miracle, every saying related to a miracle, 
every occasion for and result of a miracle, the Gospels lie 
before us in ruins. It is easy to suppose the removal of 
some of the miracles without any serious change in the 
course of the narrative, but we must face what is involved 
in cutting out all the stories of miracles to realise how 
fragmentary is the record of the life of Jesus left to us, 
quite insufficient for that conception of Him to which 
Christian faith attaches itself. We must recognise then 
that the records of miracles cannot be treated as later 
additions to the original authentic story of Jesus, but must 
be regarded as integral parts of it. Can the evangelists 
or their sources be trusted at all, if they deceive or are 
deceived in this aspect of the ministry of Jesus ? 

(ii) Harnack tries to save the credit of the evangelists 
in order to secure a historical basis for his representation 
of the life, teaching, and work of Christ by two arguments. 
On the one hand, while dismissing the ‘ nature’ miracles as 
entirely incredible, he accepts the healing ministry of Jesus 
as historically probable; but seeks to explain it by the 
influence of a strong personality over neurotic subjects. . 
On the other hand, he insists on the prevalence of the belief 
in miracles to show that the writers of the Gospels were 


74 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS _ [cu. 


in this respect only as credulous as their contemporaries. 
Kach of these arguments demands closer consideration. 
The first was partially anticipated in Matthew Arnold’s 
theory of moral therapeutics. ‘In one respect alone,’ says 
Matthew Arnold, ‘have the miracles recorded by the 
evangelists a more real ground than the mass of miracles 
of which we have the relation. Medical science has never 
gauged, perhaps never enough set itself to gauge, the inti- 
mate connection between moral fault and disease. To 
what extent, or in how many cases, what is called illness is 
due to moral springs having been used amiss, whether by 
being overused, or by not being used sufficiently, we hardly 
at all know, and we too little inquire. Certainly it is due 
to this very much more than we commonly think, and the 
more it is due to this the more do moral therapeutics rise in 
possibility and importance.’! Harnack accepts the view 
of the influence of one personality over another in a more 
unqualified way even. ‘We see that a firm will and a 
convinced faith act even on the bodily life and cause 
appearances which appeal to us as miracles. Who has 
here hitherto with certainty measured the realm of the 
possible and real? Nobody: Who can say how far 
the influences of one soul on another soul, and of the soul 
on the body reach? Nobody. Who can still affirm that 
all which in this realm appears as striking rests only on 
deception and error? Certainly no miracles occur, but 
there is enough of the wonderful and inexplicable.’ 2 This 
theory is open to challenge on several grounds. 

First of all we cannot, on scientific medical testimony, 
_assign to moral therapeutics a scope wide enough to include 
the whole healing ministry of Jesus. ‘Should the critics,’ 
says Dr. R. J. Ryle, ‘ have the courage of their convictions 
when they declare that they cannot disentangle the narra- 
tive of the life from all the mighty works, and when they 
soundly assert that the healing ministry stands on as firm 
historical grounds as the best accredited parts of the teach- 


1 Literature and Dogma, pp. 148-4. 
2 Das Wesen des Christentums, p. 18. 


tI. ] INSPIRATION AND MIRACLE 75 


ing, then the partisans of a more conservative position may 
very fairly demand that the attempt to draw arbitrary 
lines of distinction between one kind of mighty work and 
another shall be given up. If the dropsy which was cured 
was real dropsy, and the withered arm a real withered arm ; 
if the blind old men were not the subjects of hysteria, and 
the sick folk who were laid in the streets were not all 
neurotics, then we can no longer accept the works of healing 
as historical and reject the so-called cosmical miracles. 
One who could rejuvenate at a word a strand of atrophied 
nerve might bring about the wasting of a fig-tree in a 
moment, and it would be rash to say that he might not 
command the winds and the waves, and raise the dead to 
life.’ Only a part of the healing works of Jesus can then 
be regarded as possibly natural occurrences. If He could 
and did heal diseases otherwise incurable, on what grounds 
can we set limits to His supernatural power ? 

Secondly, the Gospels attest the ‘nature’ just as the © 
‘healing’ miracles. In the presentation by the evangelists 
there is no indication of any difference in credibility. In 
candour the writer must admit that the two miracles which 
cause him the most difficulty are the turning of water into 
wine at Cana in Galilee, and the feeding of the five thousand 
(if the feeding of the four thousand is not a duplicate, a 
variant tradition of the same occurrence, it must also be 
added). On the one hand, there does not appear an ade- 
' quate necessity for such an action, so liable also to be 
misunderstood as suggesting that the kingdom would 
minister to sensuous gratification. On the other hand, it 
is impossible to picture, as by the nature of the occurrence 
we must try to do, the process of transformation or multi- 
plication. The narratives, too, are indefinite as to what 
actually took place. Here suspense of judgment seems the 
only possible course. The withering of the fig-tree is 
analogous to the control of the processes of life Jesus dis- 
played in the miracles of healing. The stilling of the storm 


1 ‘The Neurotic Theory of the Miracles of Healing,’ Hibbert Journal, 
Vv. p. 585. 


76 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS _ [ca. 


may be regarded as the divine response to the confident 
faith of Jesus in His Father’s care over Him. As regards 
the walking on the water, the writer has come to no certain 
conclusion. Recognising fully that there are greater 
difficulties in the narratives of the nature miracles, he would 
venture to urge this general consideration, not to force a 
premature decision of the question, but as a plea for sus- 
pense of judgment at least, that, if the healing ministry of 
Jesus cannot be explained by moral therapeutics, then it 
does prove Jesus’ possession of a supernatural power, and 
there seems to be no adequate reason for limiting such a 
power to the control of the processes of life. If in the 
‘human body mind controls matter, it is not incredible 
that He who could direct the processes of life could also 
control the forces of nature for the same beneficent ends. 

Thirdly, if we explain the miracles of Jesus, or such as 
can be plausibly so explained, as natural occurrences, our 
judgment opposes itself to the view of the miracles, not 
only of the multitudes who witnessed them and the 
evangelists who have recorded them, but even of Jesus 
who performed them. As has already been mentioned, 
while He did not regard as adequate the faith that rested 
on the evidence to His claims of the miracles (John iv. 48), 
He did regard these acts as proofs of His mission from God, 
and rebuked the unbelief that rejected such a witness 
(John xiv. 11). He expressly claimed to cast out devils 
by the Spirit of God as a token that the Kingdom of God 
had come (Matt. xii. 28). If He had regarded His miracles 
as natural occurrences, due to the exercise of His personal 
influence alone, could He have assigned such significance 
to them? The theory under criticism involves that Jesus 
Himself was deceived or deceiving, as it is not likely 
that the evangelists invented His complex attitude; and 
that for Christian faith will appear a decisive argument 
against it. 

(iii) The second line of argument, taken by Harnack, next 
invites our attention. The evangelists in their records of 
miracles were but following the common fashion of their 


a 


111. | INSPIRATION AND MIRACLE ry 


age and surroundings. ‘We know now,’ he says, ‘ that 
miracles were reported of prominent persons, not first of 
all a long time after their death, also not first of all after 
several years, but immediately, often already on the next 
day.1 Without now turning aside from our present 
purpose to discuss the wider question whether there is not 
some exaggeration in these words, suggesting, as they do, a 
universal credulity, we may press the question, whether it 
is fair argument to discredit the evidence of the Gospels 
by the general consideration that testimony regarding 
miracles is often untrustworthy. A judge and a jury 
would be in a sorry plight if, because some witnesses spoke 
falsely, they declined to accept any evidence as true without 
a careful examination of the respective credibility of those 
who gave the evidence. Before we dismiss the evangelists 
as sharing the common credulity, let us at least weigh some 
pleas for their trustworthiness which can be advanced. 
The narratives of miracles in the Gospels are marked by 
a sobriety and simplicity of statement distinguishing them 
from the fantastic accounts found elsewhere. A moral 
value and religious significance attaches to the miracles 
they record, on account of the close connection and 
thorough consistency of these acts with the person, work, 
and teaching of Jesus, which cannot be even detected in the 
products of the superstitious credulity of that age. The 
New Testament indicates that the place of Christ in the 
thought and life of the primitive community makes it at 
least probable that the endeavour was made in the trans- 
mission of the tradition, until the literary sources came 
into existence, to maintain a trustworthy testimony to 
the words and works of Jesus. Can a like claim be made 
for any contemporary person to whom miracles were 
assigned ? If we take duly into account the emphasis in 
the New Testament on truth, both objective as certainty 
of reality and subjective as sincerity of statement, will 
such credulity, as is charged against the evangelists, appear 
at all credible? The Christian community in that age 


1 Das Wesen des Christentums, p. 17. 


78 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS [CH. 


certainly did not possess our modern conception of the order 
of nature ; it was not dominated in its thinking, as we are, 
by the uniformity of natural law, and the continuity of 
natural processes ; but it did possess (and in the first sec- 
tion of this chapter it has been shown that probably at a 
very early stage of development man did possess) a sense 
of the difference between ordinary and extraordinary 
events, occurrences explicable and inexplicable. Certainly 
the New Testament has not the irreligious conception of 
nature separate from, and independent of, God; but the 
power and purpose of God were more distinctly recognised 
in some acts than in others. The fact that we have in the 
New Testament three words to describe such acts—répas 
(X92 Exodus xv. 11, Daniel xii. 6), Sévajus (ANB Deut. 
iil. 24); and oypetov (MIN Exod. iv. 8), shows that there 
was a distinct conception of miracles. The impression 
made on the witnesses, the power from God possessed by 
the worker, and the meaning of the act in relation to God’s 
revelation of Himself, are the aspects recognised in these 
“terms. We cannot save the integrity of the authors of the 
New Testament by the sacrifice of their intelligence. They 
were well aware that they were ascribing to Christ extra- 
ordinary acts in proof of His exceptional claims; and it is 
to the writer simply unbelievable that they would ascribe 
to Him such acts without adequate evidence. The date 
Harnack assigns to the Gospels does not remove them to a 
sufficient distance from the events recorded to allow of so 
widespread and thorough a deception of, and by, the 
evangelists. 

(4) On what grounds then must we sacrifice the credi- 
bility of the Gospels, and with that the trustworthiness of 
the conception of Jesus Christ which is the foundation of 
Christian faith ? Hume maintains that a miracle per se 


- 


is so incredible that no amount of such evidence as we 
can get can authenticate it. ‘A miracle,’ he says, ‘isa 


violation of the laws of nature; and asa firm and unalter- 
able experience has established these laws, the proof 
against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as 
entire as any argument from experience can possibly be 


a 


iI. } INSPIRATION AND MIRACLE 79 


imagined. . . . The consequence is that no testimony is 
sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be 
of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous 
than the fact which it endeavours to establish. Or briefly, 
it is contrary to experience that a miracle should be true, 
but not contrary to experience that evidence should be 
false. 1 Mill states the objection with much greater 
moderation. ‘The question can be stated fairly as de- 
pending on a balance of evidence; a certain amount of 
positive evidence in favour of miracles, and a negative 
presumption from the general course of human experience 
against them.’ ” 

(i) We can first of all turn Mill against Hume. Mill 
admits that there is ‘a certain amount of positive evidence 
in favour of miracles,’ and so proves how far too sweeping 
is Hume’s phrase, ‘ contrary to experience.’ This phrase 
challenges closer scrutiny. It may mean, as Paley has 
pointed out, either all experience, so begging the question 
by ignoring the evidence Mill admits, or common experience, 
so sinking to a truism. Hume’s sceptical view of the 
principle of causality forbids any such confident generalisa- 
tion about what is, or what is not, contrary to all or even 
to common experience. The very conception of miracle 


is that it is an exceptional occurrence, not in accordance 


with, and so not explicable by, common experience. 

(ii) Hume offers an account of miracles which may find 
some justification in the extravagant views of some older 
theologians,’ but which no modern theologian would enter- 
tain for a single moment. No evolution of the laws of 
nature, no suspension of its forces, no invasion of its order, 
need be assumed. The conception of miracle advanced in 
the first section of this chapter is that it is the immanent 
action of God in nature, original and not habitual ; but the 
action of the same wise, true, and good God is entirely 


1 Of Miracles. 2 Essays on Religion, p. 221. 

3 Aquinas describes miracles as ‘praeter naturam,’ ‘supra et contre 
naturam’; while Augustine had been content to say ‘contra naturam quae 
nobis est nota.’ Loscher is very confident that ‘solus deus potest tum supra 


naturae vires tum contra naturae leges agere,’ and Buddeus supposes that 


a suspensio legum naturae is followed by a restitutvo. 


80 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS [cH. 


consistent, whether it appear as ordinary in the order of 
nature, or exceptional in a miracle. The opponents of 
“miracle must prove that it is either impossible or irrational 
or unrighteous for God to act freely in the world, sometimes 
in ways we call natural, at others in ways we must admit 
“supernatural. Enough has surely been said in dealing with 
God’s revelation as redemptive to show that from the 
standpoint of faith in God’s saving grace miracles appear 
intelligible and credible. 

(iii) We may even take up Hume’s challenge, and main- 
tain that it is more probable that miracles should occur, 
than that Christianity, which has filled so large a place 
and played so great a part in human history, and which, 
if the signs of the times in the present spread of the Gospel 
do not deceive, is likely yet to become the world-religion, 
should be built on the shifting sand of credulous super- 
stition, or than that the Christian experience with its 
certainty of God’s love in Christ’s grace, and its witness of 
the Spirit of God to a full salvation from sin and death, 
should be an illusion, or than that God’s providence should 
employ for the highest ends of His Kingdom not truth but 
a lie. It is, on the one hand, only a philosophy which 
allows itself to be dominated by the methods of physical 
science instead of being guided by the moral ideals and 
religious aspirations, which find in Christ their fulfilment, 
which represents miracle as unintelligible and incredible ; 
whereas a philosophy which gives full weight to moral 
and religious experience, as that is attained in Christ alone, 
will demand a God over all as well as in all and through all, 
free to act accarding to the needs of man and the ends of 
His grace. It is, on the other hand, only a literary and 
historical criticism that lacks discernment for moral and 
religious differences, which can treat the New Testament 
as open to the same suspicion of credulity or unveracity as 
other writings which do not display the same qualities 
of souls enlightened and renewed by the Spirit of God, 
whereas a criticism that can estimate such values will 
give to the New Testament writers the confidence and 
respect they deserve. 


: 
3 


; 


Il. INSPIRATION AND MIRACLE 81 


(5) The miracles of Christ raise the problem and offer 
the solution, and so attention has been concentrated on 
them. ‘The discussion can be completed only in affirming 
the Christian view of Jesus Christ as the supernatural 
person, with which the next chapter will deal. For it must 
be conceded that it is His supremacy in the realm of the 
moral conscience and religious consciousness that offers, 
not the sole ground of belief in His miracles, but the 


strongest reason, as it is antecedently probable that the 


acts of so unique a person should also be unique. The 
Acts of the Apostles testify to a continuance of super- 
natural power in the Christian community, but that power 
is conceived as the gift of the Ascended Lord ; and accord- 
ingly if belief in Christ as the New Testament represents 
Him is justified, these manifestations of His continued 
activity will appear not improbable. There may be 
critical difficulties about some of the narratives in Acts, 
although the trustworthiness of Luke as a historian has 
undaunted champions among modern scholars ; but these 
minute inquiries lie outside the scope of the present volume. 
The purpose the writer has set himself in this chapter has 
been attained, if he has advanced considerations which 
commend as deserving of serious consideration the con- 
viction rooted in Christian experience, that not only does 
God respond to man’s religion in revelation, but that 
revelation is made in an immanent activity of God in man 
and in nature so unique that it must be described by the 
terms inspiration and miracle.' 


1 One of the most recent books on the subject here being dealt with is 
Miracles in the New Testament, by J. M. Thompson. In his definition of 
miracle, while professing to admit the possibility, he uses language that 
implicitly denies it, as he represents it as a breach of natural law. In his 
examination of the evidence in the Gospels he allows himself a most 
arbitrary negative criticism. And nevertheless he claims that a non- 
miraculous divine incarnation is more intelligible and credible than a 
miraculous; but the representation of the person of Christ his treatment 
leaves, offers no historical foundation for a Christology other than a 
naturalistic or humanitarian. Without express reference his position has 
been adequately dealt with in the general discussion in these pages, and in 
the following chapter his view of a non-miraeulous divine incarnation is 
subjected to closer scrutiny. 


¥ 


82 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [on. 


CHAPTER IV 
THE LORD JESUS CHRIST 


I 


(1) Iv was necessary in the preceding chapter, in dealing 
with the Christian view of revelation, to deal with Miracle, 
and especially with the miracles of Jesus. The attack of 
criticism on the reality of the miracles of Jesus was met on 


the assumption that the reality of Jesus Himself, and the’ 


possibility of our having some trustworthy historical 
knowledge of Him, were conceded ; but in recent years 


amet 


there have been repeated assaults on that assumption. | 


There is raging at the present moment in Germany a 
conflict as to whether Jesus ever did live, and some echoes 
of the clash of battle have been heard even in Britain. It 
cannot be denied that the Christian Church existed in the 
second century, and that during the same century it was 
making a collection of Sacred Scriptures. It cannot be 
denied further that the object of religious faith presented 
in the Christian writings and accepted by the Christian 
communities was a Divine Saviour and Lord, in whom the 
living Christ experienced as present and active by Christian 
believers was identified with the historical Jesus, about 
whose earthly life and ministry four records had been 
handed down. Within the Christian Church itself there 
has never been any doubt or question that the living Christ 
of faith and the historical Jesus of the Gospels are one and 
the same person. ‘This identity is now challenged; the 
living Christ is dismissed as a subjective illusion, the origin 
of which is variously accounted for, and the historical 
Jesus is declared never to have existed objectively, but to 
be equally with the living Christ a creation of the religious 


Iv. ] THE LORD JESUS CHRIST 83 


spirit of man. Some of the exponents and advocates of 
this view even go further, and offer the Christian Church 
as a consolation for the loss of the reality of the Divine 
Saviour and Lord the assurance that it makes no difference 
to religion whether its ideas and ideals ever had any corre- 
sponding reality in the realm of time and sense in human 
history, so long as the ideas can be held true, and the ideals 
right in the eternal realm of spirit. We must return to the 
question whether Christian faith needs and rests on histori- 
cal fact or not, and so this consolation is vain, a mere 
mockery of the hopeless grief the Christian Church would 
feel if indeed the historical reality of Jesus Christ the Lord 
were disproved: what we must now consider is some of 
the ways in which the objective existence of the historical 
Jesus is denied, and the subjective illusion of the living 
Christ is accounted for. 

(2) In order that the ground may be cleared for these, 
theories of the origin of Christianity without a historical 
founder, an extreme negative criticism of the Christian 
literary sources has to be practised. 

(i) The Gospels must be thrown into the second century; 
at earliest, and the authenticity of the Pauline Epistles. 
must be denied; or, if not, the testimony these writings 
bear to the historical person must in one way or another 
be explained away. It is not the function of this volume 
to deal with the literary or historical criticism of the New 
Testament; all these questions have already been dis- 
cussed in another volume in this series.1 All that need 
be said here is that the dominant tendency of modern 
scholarship is to assign to the Gospels a much earlier date, 
than was formerly the case, and that with a very few, 
exceptions modern scholars are agreed about the authen- 
ticity of the Pauline Epistles which contain the indubit-, 
able testimony to the historical person of Jesus. ; 

(ii) A quotation from a German scholar who has most 
temperately and competently discussed the subject, Dr. 
Carl Clemen, may indicate briefly what the critical position , 


1 A. S. Peake, D.D., A Critical Introduction to the New Testament. 


84 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [cu. 


really is, although so great a scholar as Harnack now 


‘ assigns to the Gospels a considerably earlier date. ‘The 


Gospels, it is true, for the most part originated at earliest 
after the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70; but they 
point back to an older time. There are to be found in 
each of them, for instance, representations which do not 
harmonise, and which accordingly cannot have originated 
at the same time ; in other words, the conception of Jesus, 
even if it were purely unhistorical, has passed through 
gseveral stages. Do the forty years from 30 to 70, from 


the limit of time which has always been assigned to the 


‘death of Christ to the destruction of J erusalem, in con- 
nection with which the oldest Gospel must have come into 
being, really suffice for this development ? Further, we 
must limit this interval still more; for we have one more 
witness, the last and the oldest, for the historicity of Jesus 
—that is, the Apostle Paul.’ 

‘In this I certainly assume that not only Paul himself, 
regarding whose journeys we have in the second part of 
the Acts of the Apostles the uniquely trustworthy account 
of one of his companions, is a historical reality (Grésse= 
magnitude), but also that at least his chief letters to the 
Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, and the first 
to the Thessalonians, are genuine. If that is disputed by 
some theologians, the position is altogether untenable ; 
letters in which so many things necessary for an under- 
standing are assumed as known to the readers, as is the 
case in the letters to the Corinthians; such letters nobody 


.Invents even to-day, how much less in an earlier age. It 


is accordingly a good sign for the sound judgment of Robert- 
son, Drews, and Steudel that they do not venture on the 
rejection of all Pauline letters, which Kalthoff and Lub- 
linski, without many hesitations, assert ; but Robertson, 
Drews, and Steudel try to get rid of all the statements in 
1 Corinthians (xi. 23 ff. and xv. 3 ff.), which more especially 
prove the historicity of Jesus by declaring them not authen- 
tic. But for this again there is nothing decisive (although 
unfortunately here also a couple of theologians have led 


IV.] THE LORD JESUS CHRIST 85 


the way). If Paul wrote (to speak only of the second 
_ passage): “I delivered unto you what I myself received, 
that Jesus died, was buried, and was raised, and that he 
appeared to Cephas,” etc., then he was thinking in regard to 
_ this tradition, which referred to experiences of Peter and 
others, not indeed about revelations which were given to 
him specially (for such things are not communicated by 
_ revelations, which are always psychologically conditioned), 
_ but about communications which persons like Peter made 

to him when he was with them, as we read in Galatians i. ff. 

And indeed this meeting took place for the first time three, 
_and for the second time seventeen years after his conver- 
sion, which probably followed not a very long time after 
the death of Jesus (assuming once for all its historicity), 
In other words, even if it were the case that it was on this 
later occasion that Peter first of all told him about it (which 
is very improbable), yet there would remain only a very 
short time in which the assumption of a historical Jesus 
must have sprung up, even although such a person had not 
existed. Also there must have been still many alive who. 
would have known this, and doubtless would have made 
objections. One can assert that Jesus is not historical 
reality only if in fact overwhelming proof for this can be 
-produced.’! The early date of the Gospels, on the one hand, 
and the still earlier date of the Epistles of Paul on the 
other, offer so good a reason for trusting the testimony of 
these writings to the historical reality of Jesus, that their 
evidence can be set aside only if something more than 
conjecture and speculation is offered. 

(ili) In this connection we may remind ourselves of the 
now notorious view of Schmiedel in his article in the Encyclo- 
pedia Biblica, that there are nine pillars on which the .. 
historical presentation of the teaching of Jesus can be 
supported. He finds nine sayings of Jesus about Himself 
which it is impossible to conceive that the Christian com- 
munity can have invented, for they are so opposed to the 
current conception of Him. We need not discuss whether 


1 Der geschichtliche Jesus, pp. 17-18. 


various theories offered in explanation of the origin of — 


86 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [cu. | 


Schmiedel rightly understands all these sayings, or whether 
they are as contradictory of the Christian view of Jesus as 
he regards them; but his argument from the standpoint 
of a very negative criticism is useful as showing how 
entirely untenable is the position of those who deny that 
Jesus ever existed.! 

(iv) If there is so much testimony, even when criticism 
has done its worst upon the writings, to the fact that Jesus 
existed, the contrary argument drawn from the silence of 
contemporary writers loses its force. To take only two 
instances: the silence of Josephus, if itis a fact, is easily ex- 


‘plained. ‘Josephus,’ says Clemen, ‘ avoids in his writings 


all that recalls the Messianic hope of his people, and could 
make it suspected by the Romans ; for this reason he must 
have represented John the Baptist only as a preacher of re- 
pentance without speaking of his proclamation of the End, 
therefore he could have kept silence about the appearance 
of Jesus.2 Philo does not mention Jesus, argues Clemen, 
for two reasons: (a) it is not at all probable that anything 
was known about Him in His lifetime in Egypt, and (6) 


even had anything been known, Philo had just as little | 
occasion to mention Jesus as a modern German Jew writing © 


on the Talmud would need to mention the founder of 
Zionism.” 
(3) Even if the historical evidence could be set aside, the 


Christianity are so lacking in probability that no minute 
examination of them is necessary. 

(i) Kalthoff regards primitive Christianity as a_reyolt of 
slaves, who, ‘ following a custom of Judaism, thought of the 
new society, for which they were striving (the Kingdom of 
God, the Church), as personified in an individual, the Messiah 


SS eee 


—— a 


or Christ, and transferred Him to Palestine.’ Against this — 


theory there are three considerations: (a) there is no 
resemblance of this personified ideal to the historical 


1 See his Die Hauptprobleme der Leben Jesu Forschung, pp. 89-41; also 
Studies in the Inner Life of Jesus, pp. 38-42, for a fuller discussion, 
2 Der geschichtliche Jesus, pp. 16-17. 


3 


al 


g 


Jesus of the Gospels; (6) the economic conditions of 
Palestine make such a slave revolt in Palestine entirely 
improbable; and (c) had Christianity been such an economic ' 
movement, it would have found such an acceptance among 
the common people from the beginning as there is no 
evidence of in the literary sources. 
(ii) Jensen rediscovers in the Gospels the Babylonian} 
B sipaideash legend; but, to summarise Clemen’s argu- 
ment: (a) there is no proof that this legend was known in 
the circles where the Gospels originated ; (0) it is unlikely 
that the Gospel tradition, which is so much fuller, would 
_ have taken over the mere skeleton of this legend ; (c) had 
the evangelists used it at all, they would have used more of 
it, and adapted it by the same means as they are supposed 
) to have employed with what they are represented as having 
_ borrowed ; (d) the Gospel tradition does not rest on a single 
source, but contains primary and secondary elements ; 
| (e) the order of events in the Gospels is otherwise explicable, 
and need not be accounted for by the assumption of any 
such source.? 
(iii) Robertson and Drews try to trace the whole tradition, 
about Jesus, His life and His teaching, back to other 
religions. This method involves three assumptions: the 
similarity between the myths of these religions and the: 
contents of the Gospels, the existence of these myths in the 
religions at the time of the contact of Christianity with 
them, and the actuality of the supposed contact; these 
three tests must be rigidly applied to each alleged case 
of borrowing by Christianity from other religions.? But 
before we apply the tests we must show that this or that. 
feature must have been borrowed, that it could not have 
originated within the Jewish or Christian religion itself. 
_ Applying these principles Clemen dismisses most of Robert- 
_son’s explanations as for one reason or another untenable, . 
and as far less probable than others that can be offered 
from within the Jewish or Christian religion itself. Drews 
asserts the existence in pre-Christian times of the worship, 


1 Der geschichtliche Jesus, pp. 19-27. 2 Ibid., pp. 28-29. 


tv. THE LORD JESUS CHRIST 87 
| 


88 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETIUS _ [cn. 


of a God called Jesus, and derives the tradition of the 
‘death and resurrection of Jesus from the myth of a dying 
and reviving God of Nature. While the former assertion 
rests on altogether inadequate evidence, the latter deriva- 
tion is open to two fatal objections: (a) there is no evidence - 
that the myth was current in the first century of our era, or > 
even if it were current, that it would be known in Christian 
_ circles; and (5) the representation of Jesus in the Gospels — 
is not that of a God; but the human features, which belong © 
to the oldest tradition, testify to a historical and not toa 
mythical origin of the New Testament conception. 

(iv) Other views, just as conjectural, need not be men- 
tioned; but in concluding this argument we may insist — 
that it is impossible to explain the origin of Christianity — 
without assuming the historical reality of a founder. The 
religion with which Christianity stands in immediate — 
historical connection is Judaism; and if it could be ex- 
plained without the historical Jesus, it would be as a — 
development of Judaism that it would be explicable. — 
Modern scholarship has rendered invaluable services by 

; 


recovering for us with a clearness and fulness which but a — 
generation ago would have seemed impossible, the world — 
in which Christianity came to be ; we know contemporary 
Judaism so well that we can at least go on the assumption — 
that if it, as known to us, cannot account for Christianity, ‘ 
any additional knowledge we might gain would not avail — 
for that purpose. Even if parallels to the sayings of Jesus — 
can be found in the Talmud, the teaching of the Gospels — 
as a whole not only contains so much that is new, but gives — 
to the old so new a meaning, that the personality of a great — 
teacher must be assumed. So great is the difference — 
between Judaism and Christianity, and so rapid the change ~ 
from the one to the other, that a gradual development — 
without a morally and religiously creative personality is — 
incredible. It claims to be a founded religion; and its 
character and development demand the historical reality — 
|of a founder. The better we get to know the environment 


1 Der geschtchtliche Jesus, pp. 33-35. 


Iv.] THE LORD JESUS CHRIST 89 


amid which it originated, and the inheritances it derived 
from Judaism, the less probable does the view appear that 


it invented its founder, and did not owe what is distinctive 


of it to His unique personality.} 


I 


(1) This extreme view which denies the existence.of Jesus 
altogether is claimed by Schweitzer as the only alternative 


_ to the view that he advocates, and claims to be the inevit- 
_ able result of the progress of literary and historical criti- 


cism. His book, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, has as 
its aim to compel modern theology to take refuge from 


_ thoroughgoing scepticism in thoroughgoing eschatology. 


(i) He accepts Wrede’s view in his book, Das Messias- 
geheimnis in den Evangelien, that Mark’s representation of 


_ Jesus as Messiah is a literary fiction; and maintains, in 
| agreement with Johannes Weiss, whose book on The 


Preaching of Jesus concerning the Kingdom of God, pub- 


lished in 1892, raised the issue, that Jesus preached the 
_ Kingdom of God as entirely future, eschatological, and 


_ transcendent, A much wider currency has been given to 


this view by the brilliant exposition of it in Loisy’s L’Evan- 


_gile et VEglise, which may be regarded as the classic of 


Roman Catholic Modernism. Father Tyrrell, the most 


- notable Modernist in England, accepted this position in the 


work published after his death, Christianity at the Cross- 
foads. There is not absolute agreement on all points 
among the representatives of this tendency; but the 
general position may be briefly given.? 

(ii) Jesus’ conception of the Kingdom of God must be 


| explained by the Apocalyptic ideas current in contemporary » 
_ Judaism, and all statements in the Gospels which present 


any alternative view of the Kingdom must be regarded 
not as authentic sayings of Jesus, but as later additions to 
the primitive tradition, reflecting the views which after- 


1 Der geschichtliche Jesus, pp. 36-43. ; i 
2 Fuller particulars may be found in The Christian Certainty amid the 
Modern Perplexity, pp. 279-321. 


90 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS [cx 


wards became current in the Christian community. For 
Jesus the Kingdom was altogether future, and He did not, 
and could not, regard Himself as its founder, but only as 
the herald of its coming. It was entirely supramundane, 
not a moral or religious order in the world, but a super- 
natural state of perfection, glory, and blessedness already 
existent with God, waiting manifestation on earth. Not 
His teaching or deeds did, or could, bring it. It must be 
brought by God’s omnipotent power. Its coming was 
being delayed by the insufficiency of the penitence, 
awakened even by His preaching, among the people ; and 
so to bring it speedily He resolved to offer His life as 
the ransom-price. When the Kingdom was established, 
He, too, would return again in power and glory, and would 
enter on His Messianic dignity. On earth He was but a 
prophet, declaring the coming of the Kingdom, and in His 
moral demands imposing on man ‘a penitential discipline,’ 
an ‘interim ethic.’ For our present purpose it is not 
needful to expose the tour de force by which Loisy seeks 
to prove that Roman Catholicism is a necessary develop- 
ment from this original germ of eschatological teaching, 


and that it has the advantage over Protestantism in this’ 


respect ; for we are here only concerned with determining 
as accurately as we can the historical reality of the Founder 


of the Christian Church ; was He but the herald of the j 


coming Kingdom of God? 

(2) In regard to this position it must be conceded that it 
has forced attention to an aspect of the teaching of Jesus 
of which the orthodox Christian theology has not taken 
sufficient account. 

(i) Jesus’ preaching of the Kingdom of God had a very 
\/much more important place.in His ministry than has 
‘ been usually assigned to it; and it seems impossible to 

translate His idea of the Kingdom merely into the moral 

and religious good for mankind which it has been generally 
held to be. It is more and other than the forgiveness of 
sin or the law of love ; it is something else than the domin- 
ance in human thought and life of the idea of Divine 


ee ee ee 


— a ay eo 


iv.] THE LORD JESUS CHRIST 91 


Fatherhood, or the ideal of human Brotherhood. We 
must admit that Jesus stood in the prophetic succession in 
not only completing the theology and the ethics of the Old 
Testament, but in fulfilling the hope of the chosen people 
of a decisive divine intervention in human history. He 
was not merely a teacher of universal and permanent 
_ principles of morality and religion, but the herald also of a 
divine purpose which was being realised in human history, 
_ and of which the decisive hour had struck. 

_ (ii) In this respect the Liberal Protestant view of Har- 
_nack, in opposition to which Loisy wrote his book, is 
| inadequate. If we regard the view of modern science and 
_ philosophy as final and satisfactory, then we must regard 
Jesus as visionary and fanatic; for He did not limit His 
view and outlook to the natural order, or to a normal 
development of mankind in religion and morals. While 
we need not take His language about the last things with 
prosaic literalness, as we do not so take the predictions of 
the prophets; while we must fully recognise that human 
language on such a theme must necessarily be largely 
figurative, yet we must not attempt to force His thoughts 
into the narrow limits of naturalism, or even the idealism 
which thinks only of a divine immanence in human morals 
and religion, and which allows only a slow progress in 
goodness and grace. 

(iii) Professor Hogg in his book on The Teaching of Jesus 
concerning the Kingdom, has brought out clearly and fully 
that for Jesus the Kingdom of God was a present, trans- 
cendent, supernatural reality, the advent of which depended 
on man’s faith, on his receptivity for the blessings the 
Kingdom would bring. And unless we are prepared with 
Loisy to consider that Jesus was mistaken, and cherished 
expectations which were never fulfilled, we must recog- 
nise that Jesus’ prophecy, like all prophecy, was conditional, 
and that the slow progress of the Kingdom which to His 
confident and ardent faith in God was imminent, is due to 
man’s lack of faith, which He, too, recognised as hindering / 
and delaying its coming. We must take into account the » 


92 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [cu. 


two aspects of the Kingdom as God’s act, and as condi- 
tioned by man’s faith, and this will remove the apparent 
contradictions in the sayings of Jesus, which present the 
Kingdom as present and as future, as immanent in man’s 
history and transcendent in God’s purpose, as imminent 
and yet as delayed. 

(iv) While Harnack unduly minimises the aspect of the 
Kingdom on which Loisy lays stress, he is right against 
Loisy in laying emphasis on Jesus’ unique consciousness as 
Son of God, and as on that account the revealer of God as 
Father, on His moral ideal of the Higher Righteousness 
in the Law of Love. The idea of God and the ideal for 
man in the Gospel has a permanent and universal validity 
and value, as the human reason and conscience in receiv- 
ing and responding thereto testifies. To speak of Jesus’ 
‘moral teaching as an ‘interim ethic,’ or a ‘ penitential 
discipline,’ is surely to force on Him a lower and a narrower 
conception of the Kingdom than any of His sayings warrant. 
The morality which prepares men for the advent of the 
Kingdom of God cannot be regarded as having only a 
temporary value or a transitional validity. The righteous- 
ness that brings the Kingdom must be surely akin to the 
righteousness of the Kingdom. With Loisy we may 
emphasise the conception of the Kingdom of God, and with 
Harnack the moral and religious content of the teaching 
of Jesus as in no way contradictory. 

(3) While we fully admit all that this eschatological 
school has taught us, we must urge against the extreme 
position it holds that it assigns to the disciples and denies 
to the Master sayings the moral and religious worth of 
which both reason and conscience alike exalt, and so 
represents the disciples as greater than their Master. The 
moral ideal and the religious idea, which make Christianity 
superior to Judaism, are thus represented as due far more 
to the Christian community than to the Founder, who so 
soon became the object of its faith, reverence, and obedi- 
ence. Further, Jesus is made far more dependent on His 
environment, the views and hopes of contemporary 


i ee 


Iv. ] THE LORD JESUS CHRIST 93 


Judaism in its Apocalyptic literature, than His followers. 
If Jesus failed to transcend His age and people, how did 
the Christian community succeed? It is surely much 
more likely that, if He deserved the place the Church 
assigned to Him, He would rise above these limitations 
Himself and lift His followers with Himself, than that 
they secured a freedom to which He did not attain. Once 


more, as we read the Gospels as a whole and yield our-_, 


selves to their total impression, do we not feel ourselves 
in the presence of one great personality, the moral char- 
acter and religious consciousness of which is harmonious? 
It is the impress of one personality which gives to the 
Gospels with all their differences the moral and religious 
unity they possess. Lastly, when Jesus has been by this 
process of criticism reduced to a preacher of penitence and 
a herald of the coming of the Kingdom, as was John the 
Baptist, even if thereto be added His expectation that He 
would be the Messiah when the Kingdom came, and His 
conviction that by His death He could hasten that coming, 
is He great or unique enough to have been the Founder 
of the Christian Church, to have become the object of 
Christian Faith as the Divine Saviour and Lord, to have 
so influenced the course of human history that to multi- 
tudes in this generation He is still all that the first genera- 
tion of Christian believers held Him to be? Surely in 
history we are entitled to look for the sufficient reason 
and the efficient cause; and it must be insisted that, de- 
fective as Harnack’s view is because of his denial of miracles 
and his aversion to metaphysics, yet his insistence on the 
moral and religious uniqueness of Jesus makes the part 
Christ has played in human affairs much more credible 
than does Loisy’s emphasis on the purely eschatological 
character of Jesus’ teaching. 


iit 


(1) While Harnack, however, is much less negative in his 
criticism of the Gospels than is Loisy, and while he offers 
us in his book What ts Christianity 2? a conception of Christ 


94 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [{cu. 


which recognises His moral and religious uniqueness in a 
degree that makes Christ’s influence on human history 
appear much more intelligible, yet, as we have already 
seen, he denies that Jesus wrought any miracles in the 
sense of supernatural acts, and tries to account for the 
healing ministry as ‘faith-healing’ or ‘moral thera- 
peutics.’ To the discussion of this question we need not 
now return, as it has been adequately dealt with in the 
preceding chapter, but his denial of the miracles involves a 
further issue of crucial importance. Harnack avoids meta- 
physics ; he declines to commit himself to any explanation 
of the uniqueness of Christ, treats His filial conscious- 
ness as a secret that our psychology cannot fathom, and 
regards the apostolic doctrine of the person of Christ as a 
speculation which diverted Christian faith into unprofitable 
interests and efforts. The denial of miracles and the avoid- 
_ance of metaphysics evidently go together. To admit the 
reality of the miracles would raise a problem about the 
person of Christ which would demand a metaphysical 
solution. To account for the uniqueness of Christ’s filial 
consciousness the inadequacy of any psychology of even the 
religious consciousness would need to be recognised ; and 
the inquirer would be forced into a metaphysical path 
which, whether it ended in the Johannine or Pauline 
Christology or not, would lead to a recognition of the 
supernatural that would in time make the miracles appear 
less incredible. 

(2) A position of greater inconsistency than that of 
Harnack has been taken up by Mr. Thompson in his book 
Miracles in the New Testament. While he deals with the 
miracles in the same way as Harnack, he does not avoid 
metaphysics, but expressly accepts the doctrine of the 
orthodox Christology that in Jesus there was a Divine 
Incarnation, and even maintains that what he contends 
for, a Divine Incarnation without miracle is a more worthy 
conception than that current in the Christian Church. His 
argument may be briefly considered. 

_ (i) He maintains, first of all, that the denial of the miracles 


ee ee ee ee ee ee 


ee ee ee 


Vv.) THE LORD JESUS CHRIST 95 


is not a denial of the supernatural, but rather a recognition 
of it in its true character. In all natural forces and laws; 
in all normal events we may, and ought to, recognise the 
supernatural agency of God. To regard the world as not 
self-caused, or self-sustained, but as due in all its order as 
well as change to an immanent divine activity, is to affirm 
the supernatural. But against this use of the term super- 
natural it may be urged that while it affirms a divine 
immanence in nature, it denies a divine transcendence of 
nature ; it denies the probability, if not the possibility, of 
any expression of the divine wisdom other than that 
already given in natural laws, or any exercise of the divine 
power other than that already found in natural forces, 
while it limits the divine goodness in the fulfilment of its 
ends to the means these laws and forces afford. It so 
identifies God and the world that it denies God personal 
freedom ; it tends to abandon theism for pantheism. Only 
if it could be proved that God’s wisdom is exhaustively 
expressed in nature’s laws, or His power absolutely exer- 
cised in nature’s forces, or His goodness perfectly realised 
in normal events, would this identification of God’s super- 
natural agency and the natural order be justified. 

(ii) Secondly, Mr. Thompson contends that the denial 
of the miracles of Jesus is necessary in order that the 
complete humanity of Jesus may be affirmed. He has not 
expressed himself fully on two questions of the utmost 
importance, although he suggests that we must insist on 
an identity of Christ’s moral nature with our nature as we 
have recently recognised the human limitations of His 
knowledge. Does the completeness of Jesus’ humanity 
involve a denial of His sinless character or His filial con- 
sciousness, the uniqueness of both of which Harnack 
affirms? If it does, how can He be regarded as a Divine 
Incarnation? In dealing with the Resurrection, Mr. 
Thompson asserts that without accepting the tradition otf} 
the Empty Grave, and without committing ourselves to. 
any opinion as regards the nature of the two appearances 
which he finds in the earliest tradition, we may yet believe \ 


96 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [og. 


that Christ lives, and that we can experience Him as alive. 
Here he does recognise as consistent with Jesus’ complete 
humanity what must be at least confessed as not predicable 
of other men. If we may suppose that he would also 
admit that as regards His moral character and His religious 
consciousness Jesus was exceptional, then complete 
humanity would not exclude uniqueness in some respects, 
and why not in others, such as the working of miracles ? 

(iii) To be consistent Mr. Thompson would need to deny 
everything that distinguished Jesus from other men, and he 
would then deprive himself of any ground for professing 
belief in a divine incarnation. He does affirm that we must 
recognise the real divinity in the complete humanity ; 
but if complete humanity means that Jesus was in all 
respects exactly like other men, why should He alone be 
regarded as a divine incarnation, and why should not all 
men be so regarded ? We must go, if we follow him here, 
a step further in the pantheistic direction. Some dis- 
tinction between Jesus and other men there must be, if we 
are to confess of Him what we do not assert of any other 
man. ‘This argument brings us to the central issue about 
the person of Christ. If we deny His miracles, must we 
not consistently deny His uniqueness ; and if we deny His 
uniqueness must we not cease trifling with words, and give 
up the belief in the divine incarnation, except in some 
vague pantheistic form that all men are divine ? 

(3) Assuming that the negative criticism of the Gospels 
which reduces Jesus to a ‘ faith-healer’ on the one hand, 
and to a ‘visionary’ on the other hand, cannot justify 
itself, and that through the Gospels we can get to know 
‘what the historical Jesus was, we must try to answer the 
question: What did He think of Himself? It has 
already been indicated that Jesus considered His miracles 
as wrought by a power God had given Him, and as out- 
ward signs of His Messiahship. It has also been shown 
that Jesus conceived the Kingdom of God as not only a 
moral and religious progress of mankind, but as a super: 
natural order with God to be realised on earth by the act 


Iv. ] THE LORD JESUS CHRIST 97 


of God when men had the faith to receive it. One cannot 
escape the conclusion that Jesus in His thoughts and 
deeds alike moved, in communion with, dependence on, 
submission to God as the Father, in a realm which we 
cannot describe adequately by any other term than super- 
natural. If to believe that above the order of the world 
of our common experience there is a present active and 
beneficent divine reality, responsive in fulness of blessing 
to human faith beyond the bounds of natural good, is 
superstition, then Jesus was superstitious. But if He gave 
in Himself ‘ infallible proof’ of that divine reality, we may 
gladly accept the superstition as a revelation. There are 
three respects in which Jesus showed Himself super- 
natural, above and beyond the bounds of our common, 
humanity. 

(i) The moral character, shown not only in the moral; 
rightness of His deeds, but also in the moral wisdom of His 
words, is absolutely unique. The portrait the Gospels 
present to us is that of a sinless personality, as the charges 
against Him that unbelief has brought on closer scrutiny 
fall to the ground, and we need not even waste time in 
looking into them.1 Calling men to repentance and 
offering them the forgiveness of sin, there is no trace in the 
Gospels of any penitence for His own sin, or prayer for 
its forgiveness. If there were any secret sin in Him, 
or even the memory of sins in the past, this would show 
a moral insensibility in irreconcilable contrast with the 
moral discernment His teaching shows. There is nothing . 
in Jesus’ self-witness corresponding to Paul’s confession 
in Romans vii. This sinlessness, outward as seen in the 
evangelical portrait of Him, inward as proved by the 
absence of the consciousness of sin, is, however, never 
represented as a moral impassivity. One cannot believe 
that any disciple invented the story of the Temptation 
or of the Struggle in Gethsemane ; and, as there were no 
witnesses of the first, and the witnesses of the second accord- 
ing to the narrative itself were for most of the time asleep 


1 See Studies tn the Inner Life of Jesus, pp. 286-7. 
G 


98 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS _ [cu. 


(Matt. xxvi. 40, 43, 45), the accounts must come in some 
way from Jesus Himself. Not confessing the actuality of 
‘ sin, He yet confesses the liability to temptation. It is in 
. the light of such experiences that we must interpret His 
‘ saying to the young ruler: ‘ Why callest thou me good ? 
none is good save one, even God’ (Mark x. 18). Not 
. conscious of actual sin, yet aware of the possibility of moral 
» failure, in sincerity and humility He refuses to claim for 
Himself, until His Father’s will is accomplished, the pos- 
session of that divine perfection. The narratives of the 
Gospels present such a contrast in moral spirit and purpose 
between the Master and the disciples, that to the writer at 
least it seems absolutely incredible that any one of the 
disciples, or several in concert, or the Christian community 
generally could have first invented and then depicted the 
personality of Jesus as it appears in the Gospels. Some 
of the defects of the narrators would have been assigned 
as excellences to Jesus. Some indication of moral failure, 
had there been any, would have unwittingly escaped notice. 
The liability to temptation and the reality of struggle 
would have been concealed, or explained away. The 
moral realism, so far removed from the docetism of the 
later orthodoxy, surely guarantees the trustworthiness of 
the portraiture. It would be easy, but it is unnecessary, 
to collect passages from writers not accepting the orthodox 
Christology to prove the reverence for the moral character 
of Jesus which is almost universal wherever the Gospels 
are known. More recent challenges of the moral ideal 
presented in the teaching must be dealt with in a subse- 
quent chapter (Chapter vit.) ; but now we are concerned 
only with the impression made by the sinless, holy, loving 
personality. Can we account for that personality by 
heredity, environment, or any of the factors that condition 
human development ? 

(ii) Appreciating to the full the goodness and godliness 
of ‘ the quiet in the land,’ the pious Jewish circle in which 
He grew up, yet the contrast between Him and His mother 
and brethren, and others of the good and godly we meet 


ee a 


ee ee 


Iv. ] THE LORD JESUS CHRIST 99 


with in the Gospels, is still too great for any explanation to 
be adequate which does not recognise His moral unique- | 
ness and even transcendence. The believer in the 
tradition of the Virgin-birth may be able to see some con- 
nection between the moral perfection of the personality 
of Jesus and the mode of His entrance into human life. 
If His birth was ‘ not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, 
nor of the will of man, but of God’ ;! if the entrance of the 
Son of God into humanity was by a supernatural act of 
God, in which human faith in the mother was receptive of, 
and responsive to, divine grace,” then it is intelligible that 
He who entered into an inheritance of faith and consequent 
obedience, and not of tendency towards evil, and into an 
environment where the influences of the home would be 
sanctified by the knowledge of the sacred trust and task 
God had assigned, never even in the beginnings of His 
moral development was turned from the right into the 
wrong way. Three objections to this view may be briefly 
met. It is, firstly, not materialism, as runs the foolish 
taunt ; for it was not the absence of the paternal function 
but the receptivity of human faith in the mother for the 
divine grace in the supernatural act of God that was the 
efficient cause of the unique manner of His birth. The 
personality was morally and religiously conditioned in its 
entrance on human life. Secondly, the moral reality of 
His life is not denied, for it has to be shown that no moral 
development is real which does not begin with moral 
failure. The possibility of choosing right or wrong involves 
not sinfulness, but freedom. Jesus by the manner of His 
birth was not determined to goodness, but was guarded 
against turning towards evil before moral choice was 
possible. Thirdly, His personality is not merely a pattern 
to be imitated by us; it is typical, and, as we shall see 
further, reproductive. To be our Saviour and Lord, to 
show us not only what goodness is, but by His grace to 


1 The writer cannot resist the impression that in these phrases of the 
Fourth Evangelist there is a covert reference to the fact of the Virgin-birth. 
2 See Studies in the Inner Life of Jesus, chap. ii. 


100 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [on. 


make us good, He must be more than merely our 
Brother. It is His difference from us, and not His resem- 
blance to us, that enables Him to effect in us an inward 
moral and religious change which we could not effect in 
ourselves. The grace of God creative in Him of His 
perfect personality is recreative through Him in us to 
make our personality perfect. The writer has ventured 
thus briefly to state his own view on this disputed question, 
as to him the fact of the Virgin-birth is both credible on a 
comparison of the literary and historical probabilities for 
and against, and intelligible as offering some explanation 
of the moral uniqueness and transcendence of Jesus. He 
does not feel warranted in dealing with it at greater length 
for two reasons: firstly, because there are questions 
regarding the person of Christ still to be discussed of more 
crucial significance for faith than this whether Jesus was 
virgin-born or not; and secondly, because there is much 
less agreement among Christian scholars on this subject 
than on others to be dealt with, and he is not anxious to 
commend for acceptance his own private opinions, but the 
common faith of Christians. 

(iil) We follow only practical convenience in dealing 
with the moral character of Jesus separately from the 
religious consciousness; yet for Jesus Himself there was 
no such distinction of morality and religion. His moral 
‘perfection was the expression and exercise in deed and 
‘word of His religious consciousness. He knew, trusted, 
‘loved and obeyed God as Father, and His life in its good- 
‘ness and godliness was the life of the Son of God. It is 
in His relation to God that His character finds its explana- 
tion. While in the Synoptics Jesus speaks of God as Father, 
it is only in the Fourth Gospel that He often speaks of Him- 
self as the Son. How far this Gospel can be taken as 
history, and how far it must be taken as doctrine, will be 
considered in the next section of this chapter. Meanwhile 
it may be pointed out that with the exception of a few 
passages In which the metaphysics of the evangelist can 
be detected, the Sonship so frequently referred to is 


Iv.] THE LORD JESUS CHRIST 101 


essentially moral and religious. The Son’s dependence on: 
and submission to the Father is as much insisted on as 
His communion with the Father. There is one utterance 
in the Synoptics, Matt. xi. 25-27 and Luke x. 22, which, 
expresses’ a filial consciousness similar to that expressed, 
in the Fourth Gospel. This has been spoken of as ‘a 
Johannine block of marble which has somehow strayed 
among the plain Synoptic bricks’; but this too facile 
disposal of a difficulty has against it the fact that the 
same utterance appears in Matthew and in Luke with only 
such modifications as the editorial activity. of each is 
sufficient to explain, and that accordingly it must be 
traced back to the common source, called by Harnack Q, 
and sometimes identified with the Logia of which Papias 
speaks. This is a very early collection of the sayings of} 
Jesus, probably earlier than Mark’s Gospel, and possibly 
even used in that Gospel, although it seems impossible to 
accept Sir William Ramsay’s suggestion that it was made 
before the death of Jesus.1. Any reconstruction of this 
source must at best be conjectural; but this is the form 
in which Harnack reproduces this particular saying. He 
places in brackets the words of the authenticity of which 
he is less certain. ‘ All has been delivered to me by the 
Father, and no man has known [the Son, but only the 
Father, and none has known] the Father but only the 
Son, and he to whom the Son wills to reveal it.’? If 
there is any part doubtful it is the assertion of the mystery 
of the Son’s being; there is no doubt about Jesus’ claim | 
to know God as Father as no man knows Him, and to be 
alone able to reveal God as Father to men. The first) 
clause is not a claim to absolute sovereignty, but a 
declaration of absolute dependence, even as the words 
preceding express entire submission to the will of God, 
even when that will limits the effect of His ministry to the 
babes. The claim, too, must be interpreted in the light 
of the further description of Himself as meek and lowly 


1 The Expositor, seventh series, vol. ili. 
2 Spriiche und Reden Jesu, pp. 17, 18, of, 168. 4, 188 ff. 


102 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS _ [cu. | 


in heart, and as accordingly offering to the labouring and 
heavy-laden rest in a light burden and an easy yoke.? 
Jesus’ consciousness is a filial consciousness, trust in, 
surrender to, as well as knowledge of and love for God as 
Father. We obscure the distinctive character of the 
Christian revelation if we bring to the forefront the abstract 
metaphysical conception, and throw into the background 
the concrete moral and religious consciousness of Sonship. 
That consciousness may require, and the writer believes 
that it does require, a metaphysical explanation ; but the 
historical datum to start from is the Sonship of Jesus. 
‘When we observe the reserve that Jesus maintained as 
regards the Messiahship, it is not surprising that He 
should have said even less about His relation to God to 
‘the disciples who were not yet prepared for such a 
‘revelation. Nor is it improbable that he may have 
spoken more frankly to a few who could understand, and 
that in the Fourth Gospel there may be preserved the 
reminiscences of one of His confidants. It would be a 
mistake, however, to lay all the stress on such utterances, 
for Jesus was living His Sonship when He was not speak- 
ing of it. If we compare the teaching of the Old Testa- 
‘ment about God even at its best, still more when we draw 
into our comparison the ideas of contemporary Judaism, 
the simplicity, constancy, and certainty with which | 
Jesus speaks of God as Father must surprise us. How 
‘did He see so clearly and feel so surely the Fatherhood of 
God? Prophetic illumination does not seem to offer an 
adequate explanation. It was the unique relationship to 
God of which He was conscious that enabled Him to 
‘reveal the Father as He had never been yet revealed 
to man. That relationship was being constantly revealed 
in His confidence in God, and His submission to God. 
Whether we always have the very word of Jesus in the 
Fourth Gospel or not, Jesus might fitly assure His disciples 
that ‘He that hath seen me hath seen the Father” 


1 Although this utterance is found in Matthew only, who could doubt its — 
genuineness? 


Iv. ] THE LORD JESUS CHRIST 103 


(John xiv. 9), for as we read the Gospels, and so reproduce 
as far as we can the experience of discipleship, there 
dawns upon us and brightens to the perfect day the 
revelation of the Father in the Son. 

(iv) What Jesus was in Himself in moral character and 
in religious consciousness He was not for Himself alone. 
To adapt Paul’s phrases, He was not only living soul,. 
but life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. xv. 45). His goodness and 
godliness were communicative, reproductive, we may say 
contagious. During His earthly life He awakened in men 
the sense of sin, the desire for pardon, the aspiration after 
holiness, the hunger for God; and He imparted to men 
the certainty of the Father, the assurance of pardon and 
the experience of salvation. ‘Thy sins are forgiven thee,’ 
‘Thy faith hath saved thee,’ ‘Go in peace’ (Luke vii. 


_ 48, 50). These were not words on His lips merely ; they | 


were facts in the lives of those who trusted in Him. His | 
death did not end this gracious and blessed ministry 
to the souls of men. In all lands and all ages men have 
experienced His saving grace as really as those who came 


_ into sensible contact with Him. He has proved Himself 


always and everywhere able to save to the uttermost all 
who come to God by Him (Hebrews vii. 25).! Is this 


uniform and constant testimony of Christian experience | 


to be pronounced a subjective illusion? If it is, how has ° 


it so invariably had such objective effects as changed 


lives, transformed characters, sorrow turned into joy, the 
hope of immortality in the very hour and article of death, 
the constraint of unbounded service and uncalculating 
sacrifice for His Name’s sake? Is not the testimony of 
the saints to the secret of their holiness, and of the saved 
to the source of their deliverance, as valid evidence as the 
sensible phenomena which afford the data for science ? 

(v) The continued Saviourhood of Jesus Christ involves 
not merely His survival of death, as many believe that 
their beloved dead have survived, but such a victory, 
over death as enabled Him to convey to chosen witnesses 


1 This subject will be more fully discussed in the next chapter. 


104 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS [cu. — 


the certainty that He lived. We need not discuss whether 
the accumulated evidence of Christian experience through- 
out the centuries would be sufficient to maintain for us 
the certainty that Jesus lives, although so robust and 


sane a thinker as the late Dr. Dale believed that it would ; 1 


but what is certain is that the primitive Christian com- 
munity, overwhelmed by the tragedy of His Cross, could 
not have originated that certainty had there not been 
‘proofs clear and full enough to overcome all doubts and 
fears, for there is no evidence in any of the sources we 
possess that the faith of the disciples in their Master was 
strong enough to triumph over the failure of their hopes 
in His death, and to produce of itself the conviction of His 
victory over death. Harnack distinguishes the Haster 
faith and the Easter message, the belief in Jesus’ victory 
over death and the accounts of His appearances; but he 
does not show how the Easter faith could have come to 
be without the appearances, or having come to be could 
imagine the appearances.2 Mr. Thompson discredits the 
tradition of the Empty Grave, and admits as authenticated 
in the early tradition only two appearances before 
Pentecost; but he accepts the Christian conviction that 
Christ can be experienced as alive. There seems, however, 
to be no alternative between rejecting the Easter faith 
and accepting the Easter message in its main features, 


if not all its details. If the former course is taken, the | 


Easter faith must be accounted for as a subjective illusion, 
and Christian experience must be dismissed as deceptive. 
It may be impossible with only the data before us, and so 
much unknown that we should need to know, to harmonise 
the narratives about the Resurrection in the Gospels,‘ 
but be the difficulties what they may, the records do 
testify to the reality of a number of appearances of the 


Risen Lord to His disciples. But the Gospels are not 


1 See his book, The Living Christ and the Four Gospels. 

2 Das Wesen des Christentums, pp. 101-2. 

3 Miracles in the New Testament, pp. 192-5, 211. 

4 See Sanday’s article on ‘Jesus Christ’ in Hastings’ Bible Dictionary, 
vol. ii. pp. 638-42, for a full discussion of these narratives. 


d 
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4 
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Iv.] THE LORD JESUS CHRIST 105 


our earliest evidence. In 1 Corinthians xv. 3-8 Paul 
summarises the common tradition about the appearances 
which he himself had received, and which in his preaching 
he delivered to the churches which he founded within 
thirty years after the death of Jesus. The witnesses of the 
Risen Lord to whom he appeals are Peter, James, the 
head of the community in Jerusalem, the whole apostolic 
company and five hundred brethren, ‘ of whom the greater 
part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep.’ 
As the last witness he offers himself, and declares that the 
effect of his seeing Jesus was so sudden and violent an 
inward change, that he describes it as an abortion. On 
his having seen Jesus as had those other witnesses he 
bases his claim to be an apostle (1 Cor. ix. 1). It is true 
that he claims at other times to have ‘ visions and revela- 
tions of the Lord ’ (2 Cor. xii. 1) ; but he is doubtful whether 
he should glory in them, and he does not base his 
authority as an apostle upon them. Paul’s language does 
not warrant the reasoning that the appearance that led 
to his conversion was subjective exactly as were these 
‘visions and revelations,’ and that the appearances to 
the other witnesses were equally subjective. It has not 
yet been shown psychologically probable that in the 
condition of despondency or even despair in which the 
Christian community found itself after the death of Jesus, 
hallucinations of His living presence for both sight and 
hearing could have affected so large a number and so varied 
temperaments, still less that Saul the persecutor was in 
the frame of mind on the way to Damascus to be subjected 
to such a self-illusion. The moral and the religious effects 
of the belief in the Resurrection were such in the primitive 
community, and continue to be such wherever that belief 
is accepted, that it is impossible to believe that the belief 
itself is based on physical hallucinations. A subordinate 
and yet not unimportant question is this, whether the body 
of Jesus was raised, or the resurrection was spiritual. 
If the latter only, be it observed that the tradition of the| 
Empty Grave must be rejected, and the appearances 


106 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS [om 


themselves must be regarded as so far deceptive as they 
suggest a bodily resurrection. The term itself, as currently 
' understood, did not mean a survival of the spirit only, 
' but also the raising up of the body. Mr. Thompson rejects 
the tradition of the Empty Grave on the quite inadequate 
ground that Mark, whom he identifies with the young 
man whom the women saw in the grave, is the sole witness, 
and that he was too fond of miracles,! and he tries to prove 
that Paul is on his side. In the discussion on the 
Resurrection in 1 Corinthians xv. Paul indicates two modes: 
one for those who have fallen asleep, and another for those 
who are alive at the Second Advent. To the dead ‘ God 
giveth a body as it hath pleased Him’ (verse 38), and here 
Mr. Thompson assumes that Paul regarded this spiritual 
body as an entirely new creation having no connection with 
the natural body laid in the grave, which has been dissolved ; 
those who do not sleep will be suddenly changed, the 
corruptible putting on incorruption, and the mortal 
immortality (verses 52 and 53). Mr. Thompson very 
confidently decides that Paul thought of Jesus’ resurrection 
as according to the first mode, and not the second. The 
natural body of Jesus remained in the grave, and saw 
corruption; the spiritual body was an entirely new 
creation.? Before Mr. Thompson’s book appeared the 
writer after a careful study of the passage had reached 
the opposite conclusion,? that Paul thought of the 
Resurrection of Christ as so sudden a change as he 
anticipated at the Second Advent for those then alive. 
If Christ’s natural body was thus transformed, was not the 
victory over death more complete than if it was left to 
see corruption in the grave? Again the foolish taunt 
that this is materialism may be uttered. But is it 
materialism to believe in the absolute sovereignty of 
spirit over matter, or to hold that matter, which already 
Serves spirit as the organ of personality, cannot be so 
transformed as to become completely subservient to spirit ? 


1 Miracles in the New Testament, pp. 175-6. 2 Ibid., pp. 168-72, 
® See Studies of Paul and his Gospel, chap. vi. pp. 105-7. 


IV.] THE LORD JESUS CHRIST 107 


IV 


(i) The result of the discussion of the previous section ° 
is this, that Jesus in His moral character, His religious 
consciousness, His saving grace is unique and _trans- 
_cendent; He is not natural or explicable in the way 
_ that other men and their work can be explained, but 
_ supernatural, as according to His own self-witness, related 
_ to God and endowed by God as no other man. It has 
_ been shown further that there is an intelligible connection 
_ between His moral character and the account given of 
His entrance into the world in the tradition of the Virgin- 
birth, and that this connection makes the tradition more 
credible; that His saving grace in its universality and 
_ permanence involves that He lives and reigns, and that , 
accordingly the tradition of His Resurrection is ‘no 
cunningly devised fable’ but a witness to reality ; that 
_ it is not improbable that one who was what He was, and 
whose entrance into and exodus from earthly life was as 
_ the Christian tradition represents it, did deeds which may 
be in strictest accuracy described as miracles. He comes 
from above and beyond nature and mankind as known to 
our common experience. May we follow Him into the 
region from which He comes, or is it our wisdom to leave 
His person an unsolved problem? Does Christian faith 
need or allow a metaphysic ? There are questions about 
the ultimate source, the essential nature, and the final 
purpose of the universe which the mind asks and must 
ask itself. Man to know himself must question himself 
regarding the whence, the why, and the whither of him- 
self and mankind. Will a further inquiry into what 
Christ is help us to answer our questions regarding the 
world and man? He claimed to reveal God and redeem 
man, and human experience has confirmed His claim, and 
we cannot be content to leave Him an unsolved problem. 
Even the primitive Christian community had to give an 
answer. One of these apostolic interpretations claims 


108 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS | (cu. 


to be also an evangelical testimony. In the Fourth Gospel 
the doctrine of Christ is presented in the history of Jesus. 
(2) The literary and historical problem of the Fourth 
Gospel does not fall within the writer’s province in this 
volume.! The sole question with which he is concerned 
is this: Can the Johannine presentation of the life and 
work of Jesus be regarded as historical reality in the same 
‘sense and to the same extent as the Synoptic? An 
extreme negative criticism denies to the Fourth Gospel 
any value as history ; it is doctrine disguised as narrative, 
‘faith posing as fact, metaphysic disporting itself as reality. 
The writer himself holds that it is impossible to maintain the 
traditional authorship by John, the son of Zebedee, and 
to regard the Gospel as history in the same way as the 
Synoptics may be so regarded. But his studies have led 
him to the conclusion that there is in the Gospel the 
testimony of an eye-witness, a Jerusalemite disciple, 
who was ignorant of the Galilean ministry, but informed, 
as were not the Synoptists, of the work of Jesus in Judea 
and Jerusalem; that the Gospel as we have it has pro- 
bably not come to us directly from that eye-witness, but 
from one of his disciples, who delighted in honouring his 
teacher by describing him as ‘the disciple whom Jesus 
loved,’ and stands in its historical contents in much the 
same relation to the testimony of this eye-witness as does 
Mark’s Gospel to Peter’s reminiscences, although the 
doctrinal elaboration of the Fourth Gospel goes very 
much further than any that can be detected in the Second 
Gospel; and that it is still possible so to separate history 
and doctrine as to secure trustworthy additional testimony 
to the course and the character of the ministry of Jesus.” 
The evidence that Westcott gives in his Commentary 
regarding the minute knowledge shown in the Gospel of 
times, places, customs, etc., cannot be got rid of by the 
assumption that a later writer, though consciously writing 


1 See Peake’s A Oritical Introduction to the New Testament, chaps. Xxiv.- 
xvii. ; also Sanday’s The Criticism of the Fourth Gospel. 
2 See Studies in the Inner Life of Jesus, pp. 20-34, pp. 68-87. 


Iv.] THE LORD JESUS CHRIST 109 


allegory, got up the local and temporal atmosphere with 
the care of a modern historical novelist, and does point 
to an eye-witness who knew Jerusalem intimately, but 
not Galilee. It is historically probable that Jesus did 
begin His ministry in Judea, and, although compelled to 
withdraw to Galilee by the opposition of the Jewish rulers 
and teachers, and the untrustworthiness of the Jerusalem 
populace (John ii. 23-25), returned to Jerusalem and 
renewed His efforts there at the great feasts, when the 
presence in the city of a number of His fellow-countrymen, 
the Galileans, afforded Him the necessary protection. 
For on the one hand the Synoptic account of the last days 
in Jerusalem does presuppose that Jesus was better known 
there than their previous records would afford any reason 
for believing; and, on the other hand, it is most likely 
that Jesus, who was conscious of being the Jewish Messiah, 
and who offered Himself as such to the Jewish people, 
would afford the nation at the centre of its religious life 
an opportunity for deciding on His claims much more 
adequate, would make an effort to secure a favourable 
decision much more urgent, than the Synoptics give any 
evidence of. Taking the Synoptic records alone, could 
Jesus with truth have said in His lament over Jerusalem, 
‘How often would I have gathered thy children together, 
even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, 
and ye would not?’ (Matt. xxiii. 37). If Jesus did no 
more to win Jerusalem than the Synoptics record, such 
words sound hollow. As we read the Gospel without any 
prepossessions against its historical character, are we not 
again and again made to feel that we are indeed in the 
presence of Jesus Himself, and that an eye-witness is telling 
us what he saw. ‘To dismiss this as the realism of fiction 
is surely an anachronism, or transporting of modern literary 
methods to an ancient writing. Further, is there not 
throughout this Gospel an appreciation of the personality 
of Jesus which comes very much nearer the personal 
homage and devotion to the Saviour and Lord of the . 
Christian believer than we ever meet with in the Synoptics ? 


110 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [cu. 


Was such an appreciation possible only to the faith of a 
later age ? Would not the historical Jesus have inspired 
it in a few choice spirits, who understood Him better, and 
loved Him more, than the disciples whose testimony has 
come to us in the Synoptics? Is it altogether unlikely 
that amid so much misunderstanding, and with so little 
sympathy from the companions He had chosen, Jesus did 
unburden His heart more freely, if there was a disciple in 
Jerusalem who was more receptive of, and responsive 
to, His truth and grace? The longer the writer studies 
the Gospels, the more impressed is he with the incomplete- 
ness of the Synoptics, and the need of supplementing their 
representations from the Fourth Gospel, and he is confident 
that we are warranted, in seeking to determine the 
historical reality of Jesus, in using the Fourth Gospel as 
well as the Synoptics with the more vigorous criticism 
that the very character of the Gospel imposes. 

(3) The Gospel is doctrine as well as history, reflection 
as well as reminiscence; and the author even when he is 
giving reminiscences presents them in his own phraseology. 
For the manner of the teaching of Jesus, for the terms He 
used, and the arguments He employed, we must go to the 
Synoptists, and be guided by them. The difference be- 
tween the Synoptic presentation and the Johannine is 
not accounted for, as is often maintained, by the difference 
between Jerusalem and Galilee, the teachers and the 
rulers on the one hand, and the common people on the 
other ; for in the discourse John gives after the Feeding of 
the Five Thousand to the multitude in Galilee, the language 
peculiar to him is used (vi.); and in the controversies in 
Jerusalem the Synoptics record the speech of Jesus as the 
same as in Galilee. As the Epistles which go along with 
the Gospels show, the terminology is peculiar to the author, 
or to the circle from which these writings have come to us. 
It seems to be altogether unlikely that the long discussions, 
in which Jesus is represented as engaging with His 
opponents, with their frequent repetitions and their keenly 
controversial tone, are accurate reports of actual speeches of 


Iv.} THE LORD JESUS CHRIST 11] 


Jesus; for on the one hand it is not consistent with the 
character of Jesus, as presented in the Synoptic Gospels, 
that He should be so persistent and vehement in defence 
of Himself, and so urgent and even intolerant in the 
assertion of His claims; and on the other it was natural 
for a disciple, thoroughly convinced, aflame with zeal for 
the Master’s name and cause, to develop arguments for 
His claims, on the basis of remembered sayings, but with 
more direct reference to more recent challenges from his 
own environment. There are passages, however, in which 
we can trace the process by which reminiscence passed 
over into reflection. Take only one instance. In the 


' interview with Nicodemus (iii. 1-10), a probable historical 


situation is presented. It is not unlikely that the 
Pharisees, anxious not to be left behind in a popular 
religious movement, desired to come to some under- 
standing with Jesus, and sent Nicodemus to put out 
feelers ; for Jesus does not treat him as an anxious inquirer, 
and addresses him not as an individual, but as representing 
a party, when He makes His uncompromising demand. 
Probably reminiscence ends at verse 10, and reflection 
begins with verse 11, as what follows is not at all appro- 
priate to the historical occasion. As the author believed 
himself to be led by the spirit of truth in these reflections, 
for him there was no moral problem, as there is for us, in 
his sending forth his reflections as well as reminiscences 
as his testimony to Jesus. 

(4) If the Gospel contains either at first hand, or more 
probably at second hand, the reminiscences with the reflec- 
tions of an eye-witness, we can see how inevitably Christian 
faith asked itself questions about the person of Jesus, and 
tried to answer them. While in the Prologue the author 
seeks to commend his Christian witness to readers inter- 
ested in the recent philosophy by connecting it with the 
common conception of the Logos, yet Harnack seems 
right, and Scott wrong,! in maintaining that the conception 


1 Compare Harnack’s History of Dogma, Eng. trans., vol. i. p. 329 note, and 
Scott’s The Fourth Gospel, pp. 163-70. 


112 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [ca. 


of the Logos dominates the history. Not only does the 
term not occur again, but what the author affirms about 
' Jesus can be adequately accounted for as his own reflections, 
depending on and developed out of His reminiscences. 
It was the overmastering impression of Jesus that he was 
trying to make intelligible to himself and others. If he 
caught up the idea of the Logos from current thought 
around him, it was not to interpret Jesus to himself by 
that idea, but to commend Jesus to those to whom the 
idea was true, as being for thought, and still more for life, 
not only all but far more than all that the Logos could be. 
That the author of the Fourth Gospel described Jesus as 
the Logos incarnate shows how great the impression the 
historical reality had made on him, and how great was 
the experience he still had of the truth and grace of Christ, 
that such an explanation seemed necessary to him. If 
from him we turn to other believers, we find a similar 
effect. The primitive community after the Resurrection 
not only renewed its belief in Jesus as Messiah, but 
ascribed to Him the title Jewish piety assigned to Jehovah, 
and called Him Lord. Paul not only shared that belief, but 
by his own experience of the saving power of Jesus Christ 
was led to develop further the idea of Sonship, given in 
Jesus’ self-witness, and to place the Lord beside the one 
God in his confession of his monotheistic faith in opposition 
to polytheism. Jesus was for him the Man from heaven, 
the Son of God’s love, the image of the invisible God, the 
firstborn of all creation, one who existing in the form of 
God had to empty Himself in becoming man.1 In a few 
passages in the Fourth Gospel Jesus is represented as 
claiming pre-existence ; and it is not improbable that as, 
in the face of opposition, He fell back on His own inward 
certainty of His filial relation to God, there came to Him 
the assurance that His relation to God had not begun 
in time, but was eternal as God Himself.2 It is more 
intelligible from the psychological standpoint that this 


1 See Studies of Paul and his Gospel, pp. 105-33. 
2 See Studies in the Inner Life of Jesus, pp. 83-7. 


Iv.] THE LORD JESUS CHRIST 113 


assurance came as a fresh intuition, and was not a con- 
tinuous memory. Be that as it may, nay, even if we must 
not lay too great stress on the authenticity of these utter- 
ances, although it is not likely that the author would 
make such an affirmation without some ground in remem- 
bered sayings of Jesus, the important consideration is that 
those who were in contact with the historical reality of 
Jesus could not rest in their thought about Him till they 
exalted Him, not above nature and man only, but into 
the very being and life of God. We must reserve for the 
subsequent chapter on ‘ The Christian View of God,’ the 
justification of this confession of the divinity of Jesus 
Christ the Lord. 


114 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [cu. 


CHAPTER V 


THE CHRISTIAN SALVATION 


I 


(1) OnE aspect of the personality of the Lord Jesus Christ, 
His saving grace, has been briefly mentioned in the pre- 
- ceding chapter, but the fuller treatment it demands has 
been reserved for this. It might appear from the conclud- 
ing sentences of the preceding chapter as if the course of 
the argument were being wantonly interrupted in order 
to deal with this subject; but this would be so serious 
a misunderstanding that it must at once be removed. 
Whether the Christian Church is justified in calling Jesus 
God depends on whether He has done and is doing for 
mankind what God alone can do. There are grounds for 
the Christian confession in the historical reality as pre- 
sented in the previous chapter; but the argument cannot 
be regarded as complete until we have estimated fully, 
or as fully as we can, the worth of Jesus as Saviour and 
Lord to mankind. Without depreciating the logical 
relevancy of any of the other facts already mentioned, yet 
we can best reach the truth of His person through the 
worth of His work. This is an age that cares more for 
empirical evidence than for logical demonstration; and 
so the course of argument in this chapter is specially 
adapted to it. Not only so, but if our aim is not only 
to compel an intellectual assent to the claims of Christ, 
but also to constrain a practical consent to His grace and 
truth, it is the only method that is relevant to and effec- 
tive for our purpose. We must then define what the 
Christian salvation is, and Christ’s part in it. 

(2) In seeking to define the Christian salvation we must 


v.] THE CHRISTIAN SALVATION 115 


beware of ‘ the personal equation,’ lest limiting ourselves 
unduly to our own experience we conceive what Christ 
has done too narrowly and one-sidedly. It is now 
generally agreed that the end of religion is practical and 
not theoretical; that if it answers the questions of the 
intellect, that is only incidentally in meeting the needs of 
the life. In the lower stages of religious development the 
aid of the gods is sought for natural goods, the provision 
of food, etc., the protection from danger, disease, death. 
Where morality comes into closer alliance with religion, 
as where the tribal deity becomes the guardian of tribal 
custom, it is a moral good as well that is sought. Physical 
evils are thought of as penalties of any breach of custom 
or law, and their removal is sought by confession, penitence, 
sacrifice. As morality becomes more inward, the state 
of the heart towards God and the goodness He enjoins is 
seen to affect the relation to God. Distrust of, or disobedi- 
ence to God disturbs the confidence and the satisfaction 
of communion with God. Whenever this communion 
with God comes to be valued for its own sake, we may say 
» that a spiritual good has emerged. Deliverance from evil, 
_ forgiveness of sin, peace with God, are the natural, moral, 
and spiritual good sought, in so far as man’s consciousness 
_ of relation to the divine is affected by his sense of having 
_ transgressed in any way the will of God. In so far as any 
religion meets any of these needs it may be described in a 
broad use of the term as redemptive. But this is only the 
negative aspect of religion; there is a positive also. Man 
| desires life, and ever more abounding life, physically, 
morally, and spiritually. He wants to be happy as well 
_as safe, holy as well as forgiven, delighting in God as well 
-as at peace with God. Such natural, moral, and spiritual 
good he might seek even if he had no sense of sin, and so 
far as a religion meets this desire of the soul, it may be 
described as perfective. Probably in the description of 
the Christian salvation the negative or redemptive aspect 
has often been more emphasised than the positive or 
perfective. We notice the evil we suffer more than the 


116 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [cu. 


good we enjoy; we feel more keenly deliverance from 
danger than bestowal of gifts; sin and judgment are 
realities, holiness and blessedness are ideals, and the one 
oppresses us at first more than the other inspires. In our 
present condition the deliverance of the soul seems more 
urgent than its development. Forgiveness must be 
assured before holiness can be pursued, and the assurance 
becomes a motive of the pursuit. There are some 
Christians who seem to be content with having just crossed 


over Jordan, leaving the wilderness wanderings behind, 


but are not eager to go up and possess the promised land. 
In some of the Christian creeds the word salvation is 
limited to the redemptive aspect of the Christian religion ; 
to use the technical terms, it includes justification but not 
sanctification. Against so one-sided a view it is necessary 
to insist that the Christian salvation is not only deliverance 
from the death of sin, but possession of the eternal life in 
God. 


(3) There is an error from the opposite point of view that | y 


no less needs correction. If Christian theology has some- 
times appeared unduly pessimistic, there is a religious 
thought to-day that is improperly optimistic, at least as 
regards the moral realm. The doctrine of evolution is 
supposed to justify, if not necessitate, the assumption that 
the movement of mankind has been uniformly upward in 
morals, and so sin is to be regarded as the necessary 
imperfection of a morally developing personality. It is 
the progressive revelation of the moral ideal that condemns 
the moral reality so far attained; a man judges himself 
sinful as his moral insight advances beyond his moral 
attainment. A man is to be praised for his advancing 
conscience rather than blamed for his retarding character.! 
In dealing with the Christian doctrine of man it will be 
necessary to deal more fully with this question; what 
must here be asserted is that this theory does not corre- 
spond to moral experiences inward or outward. There is 
moral stagnation or decadence as well as progress in the 


1 See Orchard’s Modern Theories of Sin, part iii. 


; 


v.] THE CHRISTIAN SALVATION 117 


individual and the nation observable and demonstrable. 
When a man interrogates his own conscience, he has to 
confess not only that he falls short of the ideal he recognises 
and approves, but that he has chosen and is choosing the 
lower path when the higher path was open to him, and 
that, despite the warnings of his conscience, he has kept 
to the lower path. It is simply to play tricks with reality, 
to suggest even that man’s remorse is, as it were, his moral 
growing pains. If man’s increasing knowledge and 
advancing thought should lessen his sense of sinfulness, 
that would be not a moral gain but loss to mankind ; 
let such an opinion as that every man is just as imperfect 
as the stage of his development necessitates gain currency, 
and there would soon be an end of moral progress for the 
race. Whatever be the origin of sin in the race, and 
however it may be transmitted from generation to genera- 
tion, sin is a real evil from which deliverance is needed. 
The Christian Gospel did not first of all disclose the disease 
of which it offered the remedy. While the conception of 
sin is very indistinct in many religions, and ritual neglect 
and moral offence are in some very often confused, yet 
the confession of penitence and the prayer or sacrifice for 
pardon is not unknown in other religions than the Hebrew, 
although in that religion the moral development became 
more and more closely allied with the religious, until the 
confusion of ceremonial uncleanness and moral impurity 
was left behind, and a genuinely moral view of sin corre- 
sponded with as completely moral a conception of God. 


The Fifty-first Psalm expresses a real need; and there 


would be moral retrogression and not progress were the 
reality of that need to be challenged. It is true that there 


_are nations, as there are individuals, whose moral develop- 


ment has been so retarded that the Gospel has to evoke 
the desire which it satisfies; but this is not a proof 
that Christianity artificially creates necessities that it 


gratuitously then supplies, but only that moral progress 
has not been uniform, and that there are cases in which a 


more potent stimulus to progress is necessary than in 


118 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [cu. 


others. Unless we reverse all our moral judgments, the + 


man who has little or no sense of his unworthiness must 
be regarded as at a lower stage than the man who is fully 
conscious of his failure. 

(4) Even when so extreme a view is not taken, and the 
witness of man’s moral conscience is accepted in its judg- 
ment on the abuse of freedom in doing wrong, it is argued 
that to this subjective judgment of man, however desirable 


and necessary for moral progress, there does not corre- 


spond any objective judgment of God. That sin has evil 
consequences, physical and social, cannot be denied ; for 
such a denial would be a paltering with sad and stern 
facts. What is at least doubted, if not altogether denied, 
is that man’s judgment of himself reproduces God’s 
judgment on him, and that the consequences of sin are the 
punishment of sin willed by God in the natural or the 
social order. It is sometimes contended that God is so 
great that the good or evil of man cannot affect Him in 
any way, so that He should approve the right or condemn 
the wrong in man’s doings. This conception that God is 
above or beyond any participation in man’s moral experi- 
ence is, however, open to two serious objections. Exalting 
God metaphysically, it degrades Him morally. Hither 
God must be conceived as non-moral, and so incapable of 
any share in moral experience, or, if moral perfection is 
assigned to Him, it must be conceived as indifferent 
to moral distinctions—a contradiction. Further, in 
‘modern thought stress is laid on the divine immanence ; 


the laws of nature express the divine wisdom, the forces. 


~— 


of nature are the exercise of divine power; but if God be — 


immanent in nature, He is surely still more immanent in the 
life of man, although, if man’s personality and liberty and 
responsibility are duly recognised, that immanence cannot 
be regarded as the direct action of God in human activity, 
but rather as a participation of personal communion in 
man’s moral life. The more we emphasise this immanence 
of God as personal in men as persons, the more impossible 
is it to suppose that God is not affected by man’s sin and 


— 


v.] THE CHRISTIAN SALVATION 119 


the misery or shame it brings, or by man’s goodness and 
the blessedness and peace that come with it. Surely it is 
the presence of the Divine Companion that intensifies the 


_ condemnation or the approval of conscience, for, if God 
is not indifferent to but participates in man’s moral life, 


it is impossible to exclude His judgment. We may con- 
ceive that judgment, not as vindictive, but as deterrent 
and remedial, and yet it remains real. If God be moral 
perfection, and as man develops morally he is more and 
more constrained so to conceive God, there must be a 
reaction against man’s sin in His personal relation with 
man. Man’s sense of guilt, his feeling that he is resting 
under divine judgment, is not a vain imagination, but the 
necessary recognition of what his personal relation to the 
morally perfect God necessarily involves. Not less justi- 
fied is the view that the consequences of his sin in the 
natural and social order are the divinely-appointed penalty 
for that sin; for if God be immanent in that order it must be 
expressive of His will, and if He react as moral perfection 
against man’s sin, these consequences must be regarded as 
giving effect to that reaction. As little as we can get rid 
of the reality of sin, can we free ourselves from the sense 
of guilt. 

(5) The moral conscience in regard to sin and guilt must 
be reinforced by the religious consciousness. It has 
already been pointed out that above the moral good 
sought in religion there is the spiritual good. In Augustine’s 
classic sentence, ‘God has made us for Himself, and our 
hearts are restless until they rest in Him,’ Christianity 
conceives the relation of God and man, not merely as that 
of Creator and creature, Sovereign and subject, but as 
Father and child. Within this personal relation of love. 
between God and man, sin must be conceived not merely 
as disobedience to divine law, but as distrust of divine 
love. When that love is freely and fully offered, not to 
receive it and not to respond to it is sin, however respect- 
able and conformable to law the moral life may be. 
Similarly guilt is differently conceived. From the moral 


120 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS _ [cu. 


standpoint it is liability to the judgment of God, to the 
experience of the penalties imposed in the natural or social 
order; from the religious standpoint guilt is the sense 
of estrangement from God, the consciousness that the 
personal communion of God and man has been interrupted. 
The analogy of human relations must be used here, for 
surely human affections are at best a faint reflection of the 
love wherewith God loves. When a wrong has been done, 
and has not been repented of, not only does the person 
doing the wrong feel that the personal intercourse is 
disturbed, but the person who waits to forgive as soon as 
penitence is shown, feels a restraint put on the expression 
of his affection; and so from both sides fellowship is 
constrained. 

(6) What then is forgiveness? It is not merely the 
cancelling of the penalty of sin, even if that were always 
possible. We must be here on our guard against intro- 
ducing the artificialities of the human law-court into God’s 
moral order. There are consequences of sin that forgive- 
ness does not at once arrest. A converted drunkard may 
suffer life-long disease as a result of his former indulgences, 
even although his changed habits will not fail in some 
manner to mitigate his suffering. A saved cheat may find 
it very hard to recover his lost reputation. The concen- 
tration of attention in Christian theology in former times 
on the consequences in the future life cannot be regarded 
otherwise than as highly injurious. Hell is not inflicted 
and heaven is not conferred by divine fiat ; and so divine 
forgiveness is not insurance against hell, or assurance of 
heaven. It is a man’s moral and religious condition in 
this life that will determine his condition in the next or 
any other life, for in a world where God’s holy love reigns 
there is and must be moral continuity. It would be well, 
therefore, if in seeking to define the Christian conception 
of forgiveness attention were to be altogether withdrawn 
from the hereafter, and the crude anticipations of heaven 
and hell were altogether banished from Christian thought. 
Supreme in importance alone is the personal relation of 


v.] THE CHRISTIAN SALVATION 121° 


God to man; if sin and guilt disturb that relation, forgive- 
ness must restore it. Not only must man’s distrust of 
and estrangement from God be removed, but it must be 
removed in such a way that God’s attitude toward the 
sin that has caused this distrust and estrangement shall 
not only not be obscured, but shall be more clearly revealed 
than ever. If the intimate communion of man with God 
is to be renewed, man must come to think of, feel toward, 
and so judge his own sin even as does God. Even human 
pardon must wait on human penitence ; for it is in peni- 
tence that he who has wronged takes up the same moral 
attitude to the wrong he has done as does he who pardons 
the wrong. When it is said that man is reconciled to God, 
and not God to man, what is ignored is that the relation of 
God and man is mutual, and involves a moral reciprocity. 
We may once for all dismiss as contemptible the current 
caricatures of evangelical theology that it represents God 
as implacable and vindictive, when it simply insists that 
moral perfection cannot be indifferent to moral differences 
in man, and must condemn sin even as it approves right- 
eousness, ‘This condemnation must be conveyed to and 
approved by the conscience of the forgiven in the very act 
of forgiveness. It is only when a man has judged his sin 
as God judges it, that God’s judgment can cease; for it 
is only then that man is so brought into accord with God 
that loving fellowship is restored. If it were only clearly 
seen and firmly grasped that forgiveness is not cancelling 
of outward consequences of sin, but the recovery of man to 
God’s moral attitude to sin, and thus the restoration of 
the loving fellowship with God sin has disturbed, then 
the necessity that God’s forgiveness should convey God’s, 
and so evoke man’s judgment on sin would surely be 
recognised, 

(7) There is another conception in connection with the 
terms in which the Christian salvation must be stated, 
which is often misunderstood, and so needs careful defining, 
viz. sacrifice. It is to be observed that sacrifice is a 
universal religious institution ; the worshipper, in approach- 


122 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [cu. 


ing his god, brings not only his prayers, but also his offerings. 
There are various theories of the origin of sacrifice which 
need not now detain us ;! it probably results from several 
motives. Sometimes it seems to be regarded only as a 
gift to avert displeasure, or to secure favour, and so in return 
to obtain the boon craved. In some forms it is an act of 
communion with the deity; by sharing a meal with the 


god, and so partaking of a common life in the animal . ~ 


offered, the worshipper sought to renew the common life 
between himself and his god, and so recover the benefits 
of that relation. In the later stages of development, 
when morality and religion were brought into closer 
relation, the sense of sin and the desire for forgiveness led 
to the offering of a sacrifice as a means of atonement, to 
avert the incurred displeasure and to secure the needed 
favour of the god. ‘Even the gods themselves,’ says 
Homer, ‘can be moved from their purpose, even these, 
when any one may transgress or err, do men move from 
anger by sacrifice’ (Iliad, ix.). | Virgil also has the idea. of 
substitution, ‘Unum pro multis dabitur caput’ (dined, 
v. 815). Sophocles puts into the mouth of King Cdipus 
the declaration, which strikes the higher note of voluntary 
suffering : 

‘For e’en for myriads, I suppose, one soul 

Might do this service, if its will were true.’ 


Many other instances might be given. In the Hebrew 
nation the conception of sacrifice also passed through a 
similar development ; but as there was a much keener sense 
of sinfulness and a much clearer view of God’s holiness, 
the sacrifices of atonement (the ‘sin-offering’ and the 
* guilt-offering ’) became very much more prominent. 
But alongside of this development there was another. 
The abuse of sacrifice as a substitute for righteousness, 
and not as an expression of penitence, led to prophetic 
- denunciations of the popular ritualism. In the Fifty-first 
Psalm we have the daring thought that God does not 


1 See The Christian Certainty amid the Modern Perplexity, pp. 77-106, for 
a discussion, the results of which are implied in the brief statement above. 


v.] THE CHRISTIAN SALVATION 123 


want animal sacrifices, the sacrifice that He desires is 
‘the broken and the contrite heart.’ In the reaction 
against sacrifice without penitence the Psalmist insists on 
penitence without sacrifice. In the prophecy of the 
Suffering Servant of Jehovah (Isaiah lii, 12-lii. 11) a 
still higher stage of the development is reached. Here 
either a righteous man in his suffering is represented as a 
sacrifice of atonement for the salvation of the people, or 
the Hebrew nation is in its sufferings regarded as such 
an offering on behalf of mankind. Here voluntary and 
vicarious sacrifice is conceived as atoning. We cannot 
dismiss so universal a practice as animal sacrifice even as 
a superstition; its outward forms may offend our con- 
science, but we must try to appreciate the motive from 
which it sprang, and the need that it met. Still less can we 
afford to disregard such moral and religious significance as 
is given to it in the development of thought in the psalms 
and the prophets. 

(8) It need hardly be said that in applying the idea of 
sacrifice to the death of Christ we must dismiss all concep- 
tions of God which fall below Christ’s own revelation of the 
Father. An angry God, a bloodthirsty God, a God who 
can be changed from anger to love, it would be a shame as 
much as to mention in any Christian view of the atonement. 
The Cross of Christ must not be brought down to the level 
of what sacrifice may have meant for pagan or Jewish 
worshippers ; but rather in the Cross of Christ we must 
see the fulfilment of a desire, the satisfaction of a need, 
that had been vainly sought in these ways. How signifi- 
cant are the words of Porphyry, ‘ There was wanting some 
universal method of delivering men’s souls, which no sect 
of philosophy had ever yet found out.’ How significant 
too is the fact to which Harnack draws attention, that 
wherever the Gospel of Christ has been accepted, human 
and animal sacrifice has ceased.2 We must look at the 
dawn in the light of noonday. 


1 Quoted by Macculloch in Comparative Theology, p. 177. 
2 See Das Wesen des Christentums, p. 99. 


124 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS [cH, 


(i) First of all, we must notice that in previous sacrifices 
man brought something that was of value to him, and 
offered it to God as a means of atonement ; he offered the 
gift that he might win the boon of forgiveness. It is true 
that in the Old Testament the institution of sacrifice is 
represented as an act of divine grace. Any breach of the 
covenant with Jehovah deserved the cutting off of the 
offender from the chosen people, but for offences that were — 
not a deliberate defiance of God, He Himself provided 
sacrifice as a means of atonement. The conception still is 
that man atones for his sin, although it may be an act of 
God’s grace to accept such atonement.! In the Christian 
view, however, it is God who offers and man who accepts 
the atonement in Christ’s Cross: man does not propitiate 
God, it is God who sets forth Christ in the blood as pro- 
pitiatory (Romans iii. 25). We must here again beware of 
the error of so separating Christ from God as to represent 
Christ as alone offering, and God as only accepting the 
sacrifice, a kind Christ changing an angry God. God is 
in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself (2 Cor. v. 19). 
The Cross of Christ is God’s self-sacrifice for the sin of 
man. ‘The Father suffers in and with the Son the agony 
of Gethsemane and the desolation of Calvary. Man does 
not first approach God in penitence with sacrifice, but 
God in His sacrifice approaches man with pardon. 

(ii) Secondly, man’s sacrifice of penitence has some 
analogy with God’s sacrifice of pardon. It is difficult for 
us who have only the ritual codes, and not the record of 
the piety expressed in these ordinances before us, to dis- 
cover just how much or how little the sacrifice meant to 
_the worshipper. It surely meant at least a sense of sin- 
fulness, and a desire for forgiveness; whether the offerer 
thought of the animal offered as a substitute for himself, 
bearing his penalty, and so cancelling his debt, is less 
certain. The Psalmist (Psalm li.) at least recognises that 
what is valuable in sacrifice is penitence, ‘ the broken and 
the contrite heart.’ That seems to him the substitute of 


1 See Schultz’s Old Testament Theology, ii. pp. 87-9. 


v.] THE CHRISTIAN SALVATION 125 


the penalty of the sin, and the plea for its forgiveness. 
In the Prophet (Isaiah lii. 12-liii. 11) there is an advance 
of thought. The sinful are too indifferent to be penitent ; 
they do not offer ‘the broken and the contrite heart,’ 
for it is not theirs to offer. But the righteous Servant 
of Jehovah has ‘the broken and the contrite heart’ for 
the people’s sins ; and he willingly accepts all the suffering 
and the sorrow God appoints, so that by his endurance 
salvation may come to the sinful and now impenitent. 
The sacrifice is voluntary; otherwise it would have no 
moral and religious value. It is vicarious in two senses : 
it is for the sins of others that the sacrifice is made; it is 
for the good of others that the salvation is by the sacrifice 
secured. Whether the prophet was thinking of a historical 
personality, a martyr prophet, from whose death he 
expected such blessing ; or this is the ideal he had before 
him of what his nation in its suffering might be for mankind, 
is a question which does not affect the moral and religious 
significance of the passage. It suggests a view of sacrifice 
that finds its perfect realisation only in the Cross of Jesus 
Christ. 

(iii) The sacrifice was vicarious and voluntary. Even if 
we recognise the historical necessity of His death as a 
martyrdom, the seal in His blood of His fidelity in deliver- 
ing His message and fulfilling His mission, despite the 
opposition of Jewish teachers and leaders, it remains no 
less true that His death was voluntary. He did not merely 
submit to an inevitable doom imposed by man; He sur- 
rendered Himself to the will of God. He in compassion for 
man and in obedience to God willed that the crime of the 
Jewish people should be the ransom that He offered for 
the many (Matt. xx. 28), the crowning act of His ministry. 
Not only did He will to pursue His controversy with scribes 
and priests to the tragic close, but He willed that the hate 
of man should in Him be made the means for the mani- 
festation of the love of God. Had His death been but a 
martyrdom, had He not also willed that it should be a 
sacrifice, would it, we may with all reverence ask, have 


126 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [ca. 


been invested with the darkness and desolation that be- 
longed to it? Would He not rather have died as joyously 
as have martyrs for His cause and name? To say that 
the physical conditions of His death are sufficient to 
account for His awful sorrow in dying, is surely to make 
His willing spirit too subservient to His weak flesh. 
Surely it is because He willed that His death should be a 
ransom, and not only a martyrdom, that the cup the 
Father gave Him (Matt. xxvi. 39) was so bitter to his 
taste. His death was vicarious, but this term we must 
understand not in the vocabulary of law, but in the 
language of love; not an outward substitution for man- 
kind in death, but an inward identification of Himself 
with men in dying, that was His sacrifice. Himself sinless, 
He so loved man as to become one with mankind, and so 
to feel the sorrow, suffering, shame and doom of sin as 
His very own. All love is vicarious, and when the love of 
God was revealed in the grace of Jesus Christ, it took man’s 
burden, waged man’s struggle, and tasted man’s death. 
Just as the parent has the broken and the contrite heart 
for the sin of the child, so Christ in His death was heart- 
broken for man’s sin and all that it involves. This, how- 
ever, is not all that constitutes His sacrifice. He died 
not only in compassion for man, but also in obedience to 
God. As much as in love for man He made Himself one 
with man in suffering, so much in love for the Father the 
Son made Himself one with the Father in His judgment 
on sin. One cannot escape the conviction that His 
‘sorrow’s crowning sorrow’ was that He saw in all His 
suffering with and for man the judgment of God on man’s 
sin. His participation in human suffering was His sub- 
mission to divine judgment. Surely His sense of God’s 
distance from Him would not have come to Him unless 
He had felt Himself to be enduring to the very uttermost 
not only all that sin inflicted on man, but also all it involved 
for God. To speak of Christ as enduring God’s wrath, 
or as punished by God, is to sink from the heights of 
the holy love of the Father and the Son, which offered 


v.] THE CHRISTIAN SALVATION 127 


one sacrifice in requiring and in accepting judgment 
on sin. 

(iv) If the question be pressed, Why must the sacrifice 
that saves include the judgment of sin ? part of the answer 
has already been given. For forgiveness man must be 
brought to penitence, ‘ the broken and the contrite heart’ ; 
for the perfect fellowship of God and man man’s penitence 
must reproduce God’s condemnation of sin. The Cross does 
not merely show that God loves men so much that He is 
willing to suffer for theni; for self-sacrifice that is not 
necessary is valueless. And a self-sacrifice that did not 
effect for men what they could not themselves effect would 
be an empty display. The Cross must be necessary, and 
must be seen to be necessary, if it is to show God’s love 
and awaken man’s. It is necessary to evoke man’s: 
penitence by disclosing God’s judgment on sin. It exhibits 
the heinousness and accursedness of sin in showing how 
much Christ in saving men from sin suffered with and for 
man. If loving men as sinful involved such sorrow to 
Christ, how evil this sin must be in God’s sight, whose mind 
concerning sin He revealed ! 

It may be urged that this, however, is only a subjective 
necessity ; that the Cross was necessary to change man 
from sin to penitence. But if, as has been urged, the 
relation between God and man is mutual, and it is therefore 
necessary that man’s penitence reproduce God’s judgment, 
and so the Cross evokes the penitence because it conveys 
the judgment, the false antithesis of the subjective and the 
objective necessity disappears. The value of the Cross 
in its subjective influence on man must correspond to its 
validity in its objective testimony to God. For the loving 
fellowship of Father and child it is necessary for the Father 
to make Himself known as He is in His judgment on sin, 
as it is necessary for the child to show in his penitence 
the Father’s judgment. God’s self-expression in His con- 
demnation of sin is as necessary to God as His self-expression 
in the forgiveness of sinners. Holy love must show itself 
holy as well as love. Whether the writer succeeds or not 


128 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS [oH. 


in convincing others, his own conviction ever grows stronger 
that in the Cross God judges the sin that He forgives ; 
it is God’s own sacrifice of atonement. 

(9) It has been necessary to discuss so fully the con- 
ceptions of sin, guilt, judgment, forgiveness and atone- 
ment, as they are so often misconceived in modern thought ; 
and unless they are properly conceived, the Christian 
salvation will not be understood, although it may be 
experienced ; for at this point we must guard against 
another misconception. The attention that has so far 
been given to making these Christian ideas intelligible 
may easily give the impression that the writer is falling 
back into the error of the evangelical orthodoxy which 
substituted acceptance of a plan of salvation, or a theory 
of the atonement for the personal experience of the saving 
grace of the Living Lord. It is not at all necessary for a 
man to understand the doctrine of the Christian salvation 
that he may have the experience of it, for the doctrine 
that is implicit in experience need not be explicit for 
reason, A man may be so attracted to and subdued 
by the love of Jesus Christ that, turning from sin to God 
in penitence and faith, He enjoys all the blessings of for- 
giveness without much understanding. But the justifica- 
tion of a discussion such as this is must be that the » 
intellectual difficulties are to many a hindrance to the act 
of self-committal to Jesus Christ which is the condition 
of experiencing the Christian salvation ; and it is the duty 
and privilege of one who has this experience, and has 
made it intelligible to himself in meeting and removing 
these intellectual difficulties, to do his utmost intellectually 
as well as practically to commend the Christian salvation 
as alone fully meeting man’s moral and religious need. 


II 


(1) Jesus offered Himself to men as Master and Deliverer. 
He proclaimed the coming of the Kingdom of God on 
earth, and called men to the repentance and faith which 
were the conditions of entrance into the Kingdom. What- 


v.] THE CHRISTIAN SALVATION 129 


ever eschatological, transcendent, and catastrophic aspects 
of the Kingdom were included in His conception, unless 
one does violence to the Gospel records He did call men 
to a present duty and offer a present good. 

(i) He revealed God as Father, and called men to trust 
the unceasing care and unmeasured bounty of God toward 
all men. He rebuked the anxiety about natural goods 
so prominent in paganism; and as regards this lower 
element in religion He taught, on the one hand, that the 
human heart should not attach itself to these things, 
and, on the other, that God could be trusted to provide for 
and protect those who made His purpose their supreme 
concern! The Christian apostle is repeating Christ’s 
own teaching when he insists, on the one hand, that the 
believer is unaffected in his relation to God in Christ by 
any outward circumstances, for from that love nothing 
can sever him, and when he affirms, on the other hand, that 
‘all things work together for good to those who love God.’ ? 
The Christian salvation delivers men from the dominating 
desire for, and from the distressing anxiety about, natural 
goods, about which religion at its lowest stage of develop- 
ment is concerned, in a twofold way. It displaces the 
desires for natural goods by the aspiration for the moral 
and spiritual good ; and it removes the anxiety consequent 
on these desires by the assurance of God’s providence. 
God’s Fatherhood does not warrant either the petition or 
the expectation that our wishes shall move God’s will, 
but secures our submission to and confidence in the good- 
ness of that will. This is an element in the Christian 
salvation to which it is the merit of Ritschl to have called 


attention, although the expression he has given to his 


thought is not the happiest or fittest. 

(2) Jesus offered the forgiveness of sin, and as Son of) 
Man claimed the authority to forgive sin (Mark ui. 5, 9-11). 
That He offered proved that man needed forgiveness. 
There is no warrant in Jesus’ teaching for the common 
assumption that He took a less serious view of man’s 


1 See Matthew vi. 19-34. ; 2 See Romans viii. 26-39. 
I 


130 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS | [ca. | 


moral and religious condition than did the apostle Paul. 
He had not, as Paul had, the sinner’s experience of helpless 
and hopeless struggle against evil.t. But He regarded sin 
rather from the standpoint of the Father-God. For Him 
sinners were lost and needed to be sought and saved.? 
It was not by His words alone that He gave the assurance 
of forgiveness. The sinful woman showed a love over- 
flowing with thankfulness for forgiveness before the 
assurance in words was given. That was a reassurance in 
view of the censorious Pharisee’s challenge. As in His 
Sonship He conveyed to men the certainty of God’s Father- 
hood, so in His grace in holding intercourse with sinners 
He imparted the assurance of God’s forgiveness. Whom 
He received into His companionship God accepted into 
His fellowship. His grace both awakened penitence and 
faith and bestowed forgiveness. 

(3) In one utterance which is found only in Matthew’s 
Gospel (xi. 28-30), but which cannot on that account be 
regarded as spurious, for it evidences its own genuineness— 
the invitation to the labouring and the heavy laden—Jesus 
meets still another need of the soul, He offers deliverance 
from another evil. There seems little doubt whom He had 


in view; not ‘ the babes,’ on the one hand, who welcomed — 
His grace, although they had not felt to the full their © 


need of it, nor ‘ the wise and the prudent,’ on the other, 
who were self-conceited, and self-righteous, and so self- 


" * satisfied ; but men like Saul of Tarsus, whose inner life 


is depicted so vividly and tragically in Romans vii. 7-25, 
-men for whom the moral and religious life was a struggle 
-and a burden, who aspired to a holiness they could never 
attain, and a fellowship with God which because of their 
moral failure seemed ever denied to them. As His 
disciples, followers, and yoke-fellows they would learn 
the meekness and lowliness of heart, the trust in and 
surrender to God which would make the burden of religion 
light and the yoke of morality easy, and so they would 
find rest unto their souls. This claim the experience of 


1 See Romans vii. 7-25. "2 See Luke xv. 3 Luke vii. 47-50. 


ecnemespoe: 


v.] THE CHRISTIAN SALVATION 131 


the saints has confirmed. Did not Paul say that he could 
do all things through Christ strengthening him, and that 
in Christ God had given him the victory ?!_ As the Church 
experienced after the Resurrection and Pentecost, the 
companionship of Jesus was continued in the presence of 
the Living Christ and the power of His Spirit. Explain it 
psychologically as we may by ‘the expulsive,’ and we 
must add also ‘the impulsive power of a new affection,’ 
the love of Christ constraining us (2 Cor. v. 19), the Christian 
salvation does include deliverance from the power and the 
love of sin, and endowment with a holy enthusiasm 2 and 


a holy energy, so that sinners are becoming saints. Both 


the religious problem of fellowship with God and the 
moral problem of holiness of life are solved in Christ. 

(4) During His earthly ministry Jesus did bestow on 
men the forgiveness of sin and the power of holiness; but 
yet He had a baptism to be baptized with, and how was 
He straitened until it was accomplished (Luke xii. 50). 
He came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and 
He foresaw that the crowning deed of His ministering 
would be to give His life a ransom for many (Matt. xx. 28). 
His disciples were impatient whenever He began to speak 
to them of His death, and the very general terms in which 
alone His repeated announcements of His coming passion 
have been preserved for us in the Gospels show how little 
the disciples remembered, because how little they were 
interested.? It is not a mere guess, but an inference from 
the data offered us in the Gospels, that Jesus did speak 
more fully of His death than is recorded, and that He would 
have said more, had the disciples not been so unsym- 
pathetic and even hostile. The institution of the memorial 
act shows the importance Jesus attached to His death; 
and in the words of appointment of the ordinance there 
is no good ground for doubting that He represented His 
death as the sacrifice of the new covenant, one of the 


1 See Philippians iv. 13 and 1 Corinthians xv. 57. 
2 See Bartlet’s ‘The Acts’ (Century Bible), p. 386-8, 
3 See Mark viii. 31, ix. 31, x. 32-4. 


132 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS _ [cu. 


blessings of which was the forgiveness of sin.t! Not Paul 
only, but all the New Testament writers regard the death 
of Christ as an atoning sacrifice ; and, as current Jewish 
opinion does not adequately explain this unanimity of 
view, we are justified in inferring that this was a view 
Jesus Himself bequeathed to the community He had 
founded.2. While it must be admitted that the Cross 
has been a stumbling-block and foolishness to many 
thinkers, even within the Christian Church, yet it has 
proved the power and the wisdom of God unto salvation 
(1 Cor. i. 23, 24) to a multitude of saints; and religious 
revival in the Church has again and again followed on 
the renewal of the preaching of Christ crucified. An 
attempt has already been made to meet the intellectual 
difficulty which the doctrine of the Atonement presents to 
many minds to-day. Here the fact may be confidently 
affirmed that the realisation of Christ on His Cross has been 
probably the most potent influence in producing ‘ the 
broken and the contrite heart,’ and the faith that saves. 
Experimentally the sacrifice of Christ has proved the 
channel of the richest blessings from God to man, for it 
has both condemned sin and conveyed the assurance of 
forgiveness. In it the Fatherhood of God has been revealed 
as love unto self-sacrifice, and so through it the spirit of 
sonship has been awakened in man unto absolute con- 
fidence and entire submission unto God. 

(5) The feature of the work of Christ which distinguishes 
Him from all other teachers and leaders of the souls of men 
is that His saving grace was not limited to His earthly 
ministry, and that it does not survive merely as a posthu- 
mous influence. The primitive community had experience 
of the Living Lord, and that experience has continued in 
the Christian Church until to-day. Unless the most sincere 
and intense Christian experience is an illusion, the fellow- 
ship of the Living Christ can be enjoyed to-day. It is 

hae Mark xiv. 24, Matthew xxvi. 28, Luke xxii. 20; cf. 1 Corinthians 
x 


lL . 
2 See Mansfield College Hssays, pp. 69-88, for a discussion of contemporary 
Jewish opinion, 


v.] THE CHRISTIAN SALVATION 133 


not history or doctrine about Him that is believed for the 
saving of the soul; it is He Himself as loving, gracious, 
and mighty Saviour who is experienced. Without entering 
here on the full argument by which the reasonableness of 
this belief concerning Him can be shown,! it is sufficient to 
condense it into a sentence; the absolute validity of His 
revelation of God, and the absolute value of His redemption 
of man warrant the conviction that His work, bound up 
indissolubly with His Person, will be permanent and 
universal, not as a cherished memory, not as a trans-) 
mitted influence, but as a personal activity. But even 
if we could not form such an argument, the Christian 
experience has been too persistent and it is too general to 
be dismissed as illusive. 

(6). This continued presence and. activity of Christ in 


| Christian experience does not merely repeat the character- 


istics of His earthly ministry. There is no sensible evidence 
of it, but the proof of its reality is in changed lives. Unless 


where as in Paul there is keen spiritual vision, that presence 


is not realised with the distinctness which bodily sight 
would give, and the record of the Gospels is invaluable to 
Christian experience in giving content to the presence that 
is felt. Even when there is not a distinct consciousness of 
personal communion, there is the sense of possessing and 
being possessed by the Spirit of God. When the primitive 
community realised that Christ was risen, lived, and reigned, 
a holy enthusiasm and energy possessed all believers 
(Acts ii. 1-4), and so itis still. It may be only occasionally 
that there are the experiences similar to Pentecost, where 
the whole personality seems to be mastered by the Divine 
Presence; but in the Christian life, which is no mere 
orthodoxy, formalism or legalism, there is a sure and 
calm sense of the indwelling and inworking of the Spirit 
of God, as faith is exercised in the grace of Jesus Christ. 


(7) Such an experience carries with it the certainty of | 


a glorious and blessed immortality. The Resurrection of | 


Christ is pledge and pattern of the believer’s victory over 


See The Christian Certainty, pp. 214-29. 


134 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [cu. 


death. The present life in and with Christ is already the 
eternal life, a life of such moral and religious quality, of | 
such intimate filial relationship to the eternal God that 
‘its interruption or destruction by death is unthinkable. 
As the Hebrew saint drew from his fellowship with 
Jehovah the assurance that He would not be suffered to 
perish,! so the Christian believer, who is Christ’s, can say 
confidently in the face of death itself, ‘I live,’ because 
‘ Christ liveth in me’ (Gal. ii. 20). 


\ 


Tit 


(1) Such in brief outline is the Christian salvation, 
which meets fully man’s natural, moral, and spiritual need. 
The Apostolic Church generally, and Paul especially, 
concentrated attention on the death and rising again: 
that Christ died for our sins and rose again according to 
the Scriptures, that was the common tradition, that was 
the earliest creed. But that within the Christian com- 
munity there were some who cherished the memory of the 
earthly life and teaching of Jesus is witnessed by our 
Gospels, which show that the tradition of the ministry 
of Jesus was valued, even while in preaching the death 
and the rising again were kept in the forefront. The 
Epistle of James was described by Luther as an ‘ epistle 
of straw,’ because it did not contain the doctrine that 
Luther valued most, and yet there is no New Testament 
writing that shows so many close resemblances to the 
teaching of Jesus. It is necessary that the Christian Church 
should declare the Apostolic Gospel with its emphasis on 
the two facts, the death and the rising again; and it 
would be indeed a mutilated Gospel which did not present 
as the object of saving faith Christ Crucified and Christ 
Risen. But it must be recognised that there are many 
to-day who are attracted by the earthly ministry of 
Jesus, and find it difficult to accept the Apostolic Gospel. 
We must beware of denying their share in the Christian 


1 See Psalm xvi. 9-11, xvii. 15, 


v. | THE CHRISTIAN SALVATION 135 


salvation. They have the assurance of the loving care 
and bounty of the Heavenly Father, and of the forgiveness 
of sin; and if, because not able to believe in the fact of 
the Resurrection, they cannot in the labour and burden 
of the higher life for God and goodness rejoice in the 
personal companionship of Jesus Christ, they have at 
least the inspiration of His example, so that if in meek- 
ness and lowliness of heart they take the yoke and the 
burden of His filial trust in and surrender to God as 
Father, they may find rest unto their souls. So much of 
. the Christian salvation it seems to the writer it might 
‘be possible to experience even without acceptance of the 
“full Apostolic Gospel. Needless to say he himself claims 
“and rejoices in the complete Christian salvation by a 
Saviour who died for him, and a Lord who lives in him ; 
_ but in these days, when thought seems to be obsessed by 
an aversion to anything that savours of the supernatural, 
the attitude of the Christian apologist especially must be 
one of great patience and large tolerance. But even when 
there is not this aversion to the supernatural, and no 
insuperable intellectual difficulty would be felt about 
accepting the Apostolic Gospel, there are some believers 
who are more at home in the Gospels than in the Epistles ; 
and of them it must be admitted that there is a real con- 
tact of their souls with Christ, and that, so far, they do 
experience His saving grace. Many who do not stop at 
the record of the earthly ministry find the Gospels the 
easiest approach to the Epistles: as they appreciate the 
historical Jesus they apprehend the living Christ; from 
walking with Him in Galilee they pass to sitting with Him 
in the heavenly places. There are many paths of faith 
to the true and living way of grace. 
(2) There are different types of Christian experience, as 


one or other element in thé Christian salvation is most ms 


highly valued. 

(i) There is the mystical type, for which intimate personal) | 
communion with God through the living Christ is life’s 
highest good ; so long as Christ is not set aside as mediating 


136 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [cu. 


the soul’s communion with God this piety is Christian. 
As history has shown, its danger is that an amorous relation 
to the man Jesus takes the place of the soul’s surrender 
to the holy love of God in His saving grace; the records 
of medieval piety read sometimes more like romance 
than religion. 

(ii) There is the speculative type, for which the revelation 
of God by Christ. is of chief value as affording a clue through 
the labyrinth of the problems of thought. Christ saves 
the intellect as well as the conscience, and He does 
answer the questions of the mind as no philosophy can ; 
in this light we can see light clearly. But if only a 
metaphysical formula such as the affinity of God and man, 
or the immanence of God in the world, is snatched up 
from the treasures of His truth, and no personal relation 
of faith in His grace is cherished, the soul gives Him 
much less than His due homage. 

(iii) There is the practical type, which finds in His 
teaching and His example a moral guide, and regards 
obedience or imitation as the chief gain from His person 
and His work. Jesus is the pattern of the holy life, but 
that the pattern may be reproduced, He must be experi- 
enced as the power that breaks the bondage of sin, that 
strengthens for the victory of good. He cannot be fully 
accepted and obeyed as Teacher and Example unless He 
is also trusted as Saviour, and, having saved, owned as 
Lord. 

(iv) There is the evangelical type, which lays the stress 
on His atoning death and His saving grace. This view 
_has reached the very centre of the Christian revelation and 
redemption; but from that centre it has often drawn 
far too narrow a circumference. The atoning death has 
been interpreted legalistically ; the saving grace has been 
narrowed down to deliverance from the future penalty of 
sin; the spiritual communion, the intellectual illumina- 
tion, the moral transformation that Christian faith can 
and does bring have often been absent from what boasts 


itself the distinctively evangelical type of piety. The 


od 


v.] THE CHRISTIAN SALVATION 137 


Christian salvation includes the assurance of forgiveness 
as one of the most needed and most highly prized gifts of 
the Divine grace; but it includes also the child’s trustful 
and thankful fellowship with the heavenly Father, the 
seer’s growth in the truth as it is in Jesus until in that 
truth he finds the world made luminous in the light of God, 
the saint’s progress in holiness from the motive of the 
constraining love of Jesus, and in the measure of His 
enabling grace; and because it includes all this in the 
present life, it includes also the unshakable certainty of a 
_ blessed and a glorious immortality. This Christian salva- 
_ tion is not a speculation, or an aspiration merely; but 
_ it has been in varying measure the experience of the 
multitude that no man can number. 


138 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [cn. 


CHAPTER VI 
THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF GOD 


I 


(1) As the argument of this volume enters on a new phase 
at this point, the results of the previous discussion may be 
briefly summarised, and the intention of the subsequent 
discussion be as briefly indicated. The theologians of the 
Reformation distinguished the formal and the material 
principle in theology; the Bible was the one, and the 
doctrine of justification by faith was the other. A similar 
distinction may be applied to the contents of this volume. 
Hitherto we have been dealing with the reality of religion 
from its earliest beginnings to its culmination in the 
Christian salvation. In describing and commending the 
Christian experience it has been impossible to exclude 
doctrine altogether, but nevertheless the primary intention 
has been to track the ways by which God has given Himself 
in truth and grace to man, and man has found himself in 
God in faith, hope, love. We have been mainly concerned 
with religion, but the religion implies a theology ; certain 
intellectual conceptions are implicit in the Christian 
experience ; our present task is to make these explicit. 
The standpoint of the older evangelical orthodoxy put 
the creed before. the experience, made the theology the 
productive factor in the religion, and accordingly spoke 
of a saving knowledge. In Scotland instruction and an 
examination in the Shorter Catechism preceded admission 
to the membership of the Church. Our standpoint now 
is that as life precedes biology, so religion must come before 
theology ; a man must be saved by Christ before He can ’ 
think of God or himself in the Christian way. 


VI. ] THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF GOD 139 


(2) Jesus claimed to know and make God known as ‘ 
Father, and the Christian view of God is that God is love, 
and that in relation to man love may be described as 
Fatherhood. The certainty of Jesus may inspire a like 
confidence in the Christian believer; and he may even 
maintain that confidence, however much that conception 
may be challenged by the current thought which is pressing 
in upon his mind. Yet Christian Apologetics cannot take 
up that attitude, but must endeavour to accept the 
challenge of thought, and to show that this conception 
is the most reasonable. Within the limits of this volume 
there must be selection of topics to be discussed, and so 
the writer will not attempt here to undertake the task of 
philosophical theism, and to show against agnosticism or 
scepticism that God can be known, or against materialism 
or such a materialistic monism as Haeckel’s that matter- 
in-motion does not account for life or mind, order or 
progress in the world, even although he is almost daily 
engaged in the discussion of these topics in his work as 
a teacher.t But against a pantheistic tendency which 
identifies God and the world, and so denies God’s person- 
ality, and a semi-pantheistic thought which in its dread 
of deism hesitates about assigning personality to God, he 
will endeavour to show that the Christian belief in God’s 
Fatherhood does imply a personal God, transcendent as 
well as immanent in the world. 

(i) Man as personal, a mind that thinks, a heart that 
feels, a will that acts, a self that goes out of itself to give 
itself to and find itself in other selves in love, assumes 
that in his communion with God he is related to personal | 
reality ; that mind apprehends mind, heart responds to! 
heart, and will is in alliance with or opposed to will; that 
the self aspiring to be satisfied with the love of God is 
met by a self that loves. The writer in using the popular 
terminology does not of course commit himself to the 
‘faculty’ psychology, as though mind, heart, and will 
were separate entities contained in the self. Personality 


1 See Rashdall’s Philosophy and Religion. 


140 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [cn. 


is untiy and tdentity throughout, but we may distinguish 
the functions of thinking, feeling, and willing, and the 
complex function, embracing all the simpler, of loving. 
But if man thinks, and cannot but think, of God as personal, 
he does not think of God as a person limited and imperfect 
as himself. God’s mind thinks truth, not error, His heart 
feels blessedness and not misery, His will acts holily and 
not sinfully, His love is perfect. To avoid speaking of 
God as personal, some writers use a phrase such as the 
infinite and eternal Spirit of truth, blessedness, holiness, 
love; but this is simply a meaningless phrase. Truth 
implies the subject that thinks, blessedness the subject 
that feels, holiness the subject that wills, love the subject 
that gives itself, and finds itself in other subjects. 
‘Spirit? means nothing and can mean nothing but ‘ self’ 
or ‘personality’ or ‘subject.’ Man in thinking of God 
as personal, but not as imperfect and limited as himself, 
necessarily thinks of God as’ transcendent as well as 
immanent. A sense of dependence on a power greater 
than man possesses, and greater than the natural forces, 
which man can but partially control and direct, is one of 
the simplest and earliest elements in religion, and it is 
not left behind as an antiquated superstition as man’s 
religion becomes more intelligent. The sense of the infinite 
and absolute may be more distinctly defined in philosophy 
than in piety, but it does not vanish into nothingness. 
Finite and infinite, relative and absolute, are categories 
from which human thought cannot escape. The will and 
the mind that accounts for and explains the Universe as 
force and law, cannot be conceived as itself finite and 
‘relative. If God is only the Universe looked at from 
another point of view, the conception of God is otiose, as 
it explains nothing. But for the religious consciousness, 
reinforced by the philosophical intellect, not only is this 
metaphysical transcendence a necessity of thought, still 
more is the moral transcendence of God necessary. God 
must be thought of as not only stronger than the physical 
forces in which His will is exercised, and wiser than all the 


errnege 


VI.] THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF GOD 141 


natural laws in which His mind is expressed, but as better 


than man’s loftiest ideals of, or his largest aspirations after, 


perfection. It is true that in ancient Greece the gods 
were represented as of like passions with men ; but Greek 
religion has contributed nothing to the spiritual progress 
of mankind, and was subjected as morally injurious to 
censure by the philosophy which has furthered man’s 
intellectual progress. In religion there must be reverence 
for, and submission to, as well as dependence on God ; 


and it may be confidently affirmed that for religion God 
‘must be personality, transcendent as well as immanent.' 


(ii) The tendency of modern philosophy is also evidence’ 
that personality is the highest category of thought. The 
absolute idealism of Hegel, which developed only one 


"| aspect of the Kantian philosophy, the Critique of the Pure 


Reason, was an intellectualism in which man’s moral 
ideals and his religious aspirations were sacrificed to his 


speculative interests; life was made the victim of logic. 
In pragmatism there is the inevitable reaction, which is 
quite as one-sided. Truth is an element of life, as well as 
blessedness, holiness, or love, and we must not assume 
a permanent divorce of head and heart, as though only 
relative truth must be allied with practical interests. 
If man is to interpret the Universe at all, it must be the 
whole man; personalism seems to the writer the one 
adequate philosophy, although we have not yet had a 
master-mind to give it its due place. Does not Eucken’s 
activism at least suggest that it is only as man develops 
his personal life (the term he uses is spiritual), that he 
realises his affinity to and communion with the personal 
life, that is the ultimate reality? Does not Bergson’s 
idea of creative evolution at least break the bar of that 
mechanical naturalism that treated the Universe as a 
fixed quantity, a finished article, and so make us look 
beyond and above the Universe as it now is to what is 
still to be? His élan vital suggests the transcendent as well 
as the immanent force or law. In the movements of 


1 See The Christian Certainty, chap. x. 


142 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [cn. 


modern philosophy there is for the writer a promise of 
reinforcement of the Christian view of God as personal, 
transcendent as well as immanent. 

(3) What is the objection to thinking of God as personal ? 

(i) It is said that man is conscious of himself as subject 
only in contrast with the world as object, and develops his 
personality only in his reaction upon that world. It is 
true that in our thought subject and object are correlative, 
and we cannot think the one without the other; but is 
there not a sense of self realised especially in the feeling of 
pleasure or pain, prior to and condition of that contrast 
of subject and object? If there were not, how and why 
should we identify self with the subject and distinguish 
it from the object? Again, it is true that we realise our 
own personality as we gain knowledge of and secure 
mastery over the world; we need the constant stimulus 
of our environment for the exercise of our powers. But 
is there not again a self-consciousness, an inner life, 
a realisation of our own personality within, in which we 
distinguish ourselves from and become less dependent on 
the world around? Does not the development of person- 
ality depend on the measure in which we have a life of our 
own, memories, aspirations, reflections, less and less deter- 
mined in its course by outward things ? Does not person- 
ality aim at, and strive for, self-sufficiency, independence 
of the world around ?_ That purpose is never fully attained, 
but it may surely be taken as an indication of the ideal 
of personality which is but partially realised in us. We 
may heartily endorse Lotze’s statement at the conclusion 
of a similar argument, that these limitations belong to 
imperfect personality in man, but do not attach to the 
conception of personality as such.? 

(ii) It is urged again that the predicates of infinite and 
absolute cannot be attached to personality. If by infinite 
we mean unlimited, and by absolute unrelated, then 
assuredly we cannot speak of God as personal if He is 
infinite and absolute in this sense. But if that be the 


1 See Lotze’s Microcosmus, Book 1x. chap iv. 


VI. ] THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF GOD 143 


only meaning of the terms, can we speak of God at all? 
Are we not left with a mere blank ? If God is everything- 
in-general He is nothing-in-particular, and we can say 
nothing about God at all. Agnosticism is the logical out- 
come of such a mode of thought. .But if we define infinite 
as self-limited, and absolute as self-related, the only sense 
of the words that conveys anything to our intelligence, 
the difficulty entirely disappears. For is not the ideal of 
personality just self-knowledge, self-reverence, self-con- 
trol, or, in a word, self-sufficiency ? We can think of God 
as personal choosing His own limitations, and forming His 
own relations, not limited or related by anything that is 
not willed by Himself. If the existence of the world con- 
ditions the exercise of His power and the expression of 
His wisdom, He has Himself willed that that world should 
be. If, still more, the existence of free, responsible persons, 
who may will in accordance with or opposition to His 
purpose in His world, conditions His fulfilment of His 
will, it is He who has willed the wills which may oppose 
His. As we shall afterwards see in the Christian doctrine 
of the Trinity God is not conceived as a unit, but a unity 
in manifold conditions in Himself, and so self-limited 
and self-related. 

(iii) It is as ideal personality that man conceives God ; 
he thinks of God as all that in his best moments he aspires 
to be, and better, but not other than his best. Now if we 
look more clearly at these ideals we shall see more clearly 
how each implies this infinitude and absoluteness as self- 
sufficiency. Is not truth reality that is consistently 
rational, completely intelligible, being the perfect expression 
of thought? Is not blessedness feeling that is perfectly 
satisfying ? Is not holiness aspiration fully realised in 
attainment ? Is not love the free giving and the full 
finding of self in others? Mind, heart, will, self perfectly 
realised, object and subject in perfect accord, that is ideal 
personality ; and that can only be when all limitations 
are self-imposed, and all relations are self-determined, 
not as the contradiction but as the condition of self- 


{44 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [cn. 


realisation. The more thoroughly we think out man’s 
ideals as rational, emotional, moral, and social, the more 
will infinitude and absoluteness, rightly defined, appear 
consistent with ideal personality in God. 

(iv) One more objection may be mentioned. From the 
standpoint of physical science, and the naturalism which 
is the more or less deliberate philosophy from that stand- 
point too exclusively held, it is urged that man as a part 
of nature is too insignificant and unimportant in the 
Universe to be warranted in thinking of the essential 
reality, the ultimate cause, and the final purpose of that 
Universe as having any resemblance to himself, This is 
an anthropomorphism as absurd as it is impudent. This 
scepticism, however, regarding the competence of the 
human mind should begin sooner. Science assumes that 
the mind of man can know and understand the Universe : 
the categories it uses are themselves anthropomorphic, 
cause and law and organism get meaning only from 
human self-consciousness. The mind that interprets the 
world, that so apprehends its greatness as to be led to 
depreciate its own littleness, is not and cannot be merely 
a part of the world, incapable of finding out the meaning 
and the worth of the whole. The argument is self-destruc- 
_ tive, for it challenges the competence of the very mind 
which is capable of thinking the challenge. If man is to 
be forbidden to think of God anthropomorphically, what 
are the consequences for man’s own life? All his ideals, 
which claim authority as objective because expressing the 
supreme reality of existence, fall in value as subjective, as 
a reaching for something beyond his grasp, a self-exaltation 
into the void. His religion especially becomes a self- 
illusion, for he cannot relate himself to the incognisable and 
inconceivable ; an altar to a truly unknowable God would 
be man’s mocking of himself. Especially would the con- 
ception of Incarnation be an absurdity, as God, if incon- 
ceivable as personal, could not express Himself in a personal 
humanity. The objection to assigning personality to 
God cuts at the very roots of man’s intellectual, moral, 


vi. ] THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF GOD 145 


and religious life, and makes the Christian faith meaning- 
Jess and worthless; and yet thinkers professing to be 
Christians talk of super-personal deity.? 


II 


(1) But Fatherhood implies more than personality ; it: 
implies perfect personality expressive and communicative | 
of itself in love. Does the Universe as we know it reveal 
perfect personality as its ultimate cause and final purpose ? 
This question at once brings us face to face with the problem 
of evil. The alternative that seems forced on our thought 
by all the physical evil or pain, and still more by the moral 
evil or sin, is this, that if God is good, willing only the 
happiness and the holiness of man, He is either not wise 
enough to devise the means for that end, and so is not 
omniscient, or He is not strong enough by the means He 
devises to bring about the end he desires, and thus is not 
omnipotent. J.S. Mill preferred to surrender God’s power 
rather than God’s goodness; but held that one or other 
attribute must be abandoned.? The Christian faith 
maintains both. The Christian would have no assurance 
of salvation did he not believe in God’s goodness ; and he 
could not maintain the certainty of his salvation had he 
any doubts of God’s power. A salvation contingent on 
God’s power not disappointing His goodness would never 
have inspired the songs of the saints. The Christian cannot 
be a pessimist, even in Mill’s modified sense ; that divine 
power fails to realise the purpose of divine goodness. 
Neither is he an optimist in the sense that has so un- 
warrantably been put on Browning’s words, ‘God’s in 
His heaven, all’s right with the world.’ The world as it 
now is is not the best of all possible worlds for the Christian, 
for it is a world that needs redemption from sin and con- 
sequent evil (this is the pessimistic aspect of his faith), 
and it is a world that is being redeemed (this is the opti- 
mistic aspect of his faith). His attitude is best expressed 


1 See also Illingworth’s Personality, Human and Divine. 
2 See his Three Essays on Religion: Theism, part ii. 


K 


i146 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [ca. 


by the term meliorism; the worst is being turned to the 
best ; but the seriousness of the problem for Christian 
faith is seen in the Christian belief that the divine sacrifice 
in Christ is the necessary means of the human salvation.1 

(2) From the Christian standpoint great stress is laid 
on the distinction between physical and moral evil, although 
a connection is not altogether denied. 

(i) It is impossible to maintain that all physical evil 
is the result of moral, as the catastrophes of nature are not 
and cannot be represented as the results of man’s moral 
depravity. Christian theology to-day has abandoned the 
standpoint once generally held that earthquake, volcano, 
flood, famine, pestilence could all be regarded as direct 
divine judgments on man’s sin. For, first of all, the physical 
connection of all these disasters is definitely known; 
secondly, we have learned the lesson from Jesus not to 
judge, so that we may not be judged (Matt. vii. 1; Luke xiii. 
1-5); and thirdly, such divine judgments involving innocent 
and guilty alike, falling sometimes where the human guilt 
seems far less than in other cases where these are with- 
held, would raise a still more serious problem about the 
- justice and goodness of God’s dealing with man. 

(i1) But even where no causal connection between physical 
_. and moral evil can be affirmed, we must not assert that 
- the physical evil is meaningless in relation to man’s dis- 
cipline and development. As has already been indicated, 
man’s personality is realised in relation to the world 
around. It is by knowledge of nature’s laws and mastery 
of nature’s forces that man advances in civilisation and 

culture. Were the struggle with nature less severe, the 
» discipline of human faculty would be less effective. Where 
nature is most bountiful man is usually lazy ; it is where 
nature must be wrestled with to yield her treasures that 
man advances in industry, science, and social organisation. 
Nature’s severity is thus more beneficent than her 
indulgence. 


1 See Fairbairn’s The Philosophy of the Christian Religion, Book 


chaps. iii., iv. 


grcremoe ir: 
eon ae, 


VI. ] THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF GOD 147 


(iii) There is one order of nature, and the same forces 
under the same laws which produce the physical cata- 
strophes also produce all the physical benefits which nature 
bestows on man. As far as our knowledge goes, only 
a constant divine intervention, an unending series of 
miracles, could produce only physical good without physical 
evil. We take notice of the catastrophes, we pass over 
the benefits. The exceptional evil bulks much more 
largely than the constant good. We may say, if we will, 
that a greater wisdom could have devised, and a greater 
power could have produced, a Universe in which good had 
no attendant evil; but that is surely the claim of a greater 
knowledge and a deeper insight than we can arrogate to 
ourselves. If we can find more good than evil in the 
course of nature, and if we can see that even the evil 
serves man’s good in furthering his growth, the problem 
is not left altogether insoluble. 

(iv) There are evils, however, that we can and must 
connect directly with human sin as error, for wilful ignor- 
ance must be regarded as morally blameworthy, and 
preventable suffering as involving moral responsibility. 
Why should cities be built close to volcanoes ? In regions: 
visited frequently by earthquake why should massive 
stone buildings be erected instead of the lighter structures 
which have been found more suitable? Why by proper 
irrigation and preservation of forests should not the 
droughts that are the most common cause of famine be 
avoided ? Why should wealth be squandered on arma- 
ments which might be profitably employed in agricultural 
development ? Why by neglect of sanitation should 


-pestilences be encouraged ? If we were to eliminate all the 


physical evil due to ignorance, indifference, or indolence, 
how greatly the sum of human misery so caused would be 
reduced! Such an education of humanity may seem 
very expensive, but who can be confident that other 
means could produce the same results, or that the results 
are not a justification of the means ? 

(v) Physical evil further results from deliberate wicked- 


148 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [cux. 


ness. ‘Man’s inhumanity to man makes countless 
thousands mourn.’ The Armenian, the Congo, and even 
the Putumayo atrocities have led to a hasty challenge of 
God's goodness; but they are altogether due to human 
sin in the perpetrators, and an indifference that is 
criminal in those who, on hearing of them first of all, 
did not take vigorous enough measures to put an end to 
them. Many a man brings disease and death on himself 
and on his dependents by his sensual self-indulgence. 
The sins of the fathers descend in physical evil to the 
children, and the members of a society suffer from the 
wrongdoing of some of their number. If it be urged that 
the suffering of the innocent with the guilty is unjust, 
it may be asked, how could there be any human society 
at all, if there were not these close relationships, which are 
not only the channels of evil but also of good? Without 
heredity, how would one generation benefit another ? 
Without the unity of a society, widening as it is into the 
solidarity of humanity, could the common good grow ? 
That there is progress; that humanity is becoming more 
a reality, and less an abstraction—this is a proof that 
human relationships, bringing the actuality of evil, hold 
in them a still greater possibility of good, which is being 
realised. 

(vi) There is in what appears physical evil alone, a 
contributory element from the human consciousness. 
Physical dissolution existed before man came into the 
world; as a physical organism man is necessarily subject 
to that same end; but, as death is for the human con- 
science, is it not a terror and a darkness because man is 
conscious of guilt, distrustful of God, apprehensive of 
judgment ? For the Christian believer in the measure of 
his faith death has been swallowed up in victory. So, as 
a man advances morally and religiously, physical evil is 
more and more subservient to the higher good he seeks ; he 
discovers that it is well for him that he has been afflicted ; 
the dross of an earthly loss can be transmuted into the 
gold of a heavenly gain. As a man knows, trusts, and 


VI. ] THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF GOD 149 


loves God, ‘all things work together for good,’ and for 
him even physical evil is no challenge of God’s goodness. 

(3) While the problem of physical evil cannot be simply 
resolved into the problem of moral evil, its scope is very 
considerably reduced by the recognition of not only the 
connection of moral with physical evil, but also the sub- 
ordination of physical evil to moral good in the ways 
already indicated. We must now turn to the problem of 
moral evil. If man is free, God is not directly responsible 
for the abuse of that freedom by man, or the consequences 
of that abuse. In the next chapter we must present the 
Christian argument for human liberty and responsibility, 
and must here assume the reality. As the Creator, who 
has freely willed that freedom in man, God is responsible 
(and we may say that with all reverence) for the final issue 
for the human race of that fateful gift of freedom. We 
cannot rid ourselves of the problem by simply casting the 
blame on man, for the Creator has a responsibility for His 
creatures. Still less can we evade the difficulty when we 
are seeking to affirm that the Creator is Father. Two 
considerations may be here urged. 


(i) We cannot conceive of the relation of man to God AE 


as child to Father, trusting, loving, serving without freedom. 
As a personal relation of man to God, it involves personal 
liberty and responsibility. Automata, cunningly con- 
structed by divine omnipotence, could not have any 
moral or religious value for God; only free personalities 


» can. But freedom involves the possibility of evil as well 
. as good. The will that chooses trust can also choose 


distrust. The heart that loves can also hate. Holiness 
is by the rejection of sin. How could there be any moral 
and religious communion of God and man without freedom. 
and how freedom without the possibility of sin? Had 
God excluded the possibility of sin in man’s freedom in 
the making of the world, even His omnipotence could not 
have given any moral or religious value to man, and 
through him to the world. Which is better: a world 
without sin because without personality, or a world with 


150 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS [cu 


sin in which personal relations of man to God are possible ? 
Can there be any doubt about the answer from any stand- 
point in which moral and religious values are recognised 
at all? and it is only from such a standpoint that sin is a 
problem at all. 

' (ii) The possibility of sin having become actuality, 
what should we expect from divine goodness? The 
immediate withdrawal of the freedom abused, and the 
extinction of the personality created, and so the defeat of 
God’s purpose in man at the very start? Or, what we do 
find, the constant working of God’s Spirit against the sin 
of man in the customs and laws of human society, in the 
individual conscience, in inward remorse for and outward 
retribution on sin, in a providence that is working against 
evil and making for good, in a purpose of redemption 
consummated in Jesus Christ, in which the divine sacrifice 
for sin so awakens man’s penitence, reproducing God’s 
judgment and his faith, receiving God’s forgiveness, that 
sin is at last defeated in the soul of man, and he turns from 
sin to God. It is in the Cross, where God suffers for sin to 
save from it, that His responsibility is accepted and 
discharged. Only the belief in the Christian redemption 
offers the solution of the problem of moral evil. 

(4) If for Christian faith the problem of moral evil is 
being thus solved, not by a theoretical demonstration that 
‘evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound,’ but by 
a practical experience of deliverance from sin unto God, 
_ even the problem of physical evil becomes less intolerable. 
In the considerations that have already been advanced, 
the writer does not pretend even to himself that he has 
offered a complete solution of the problem of physical 
evil; there are what seem to us premature deaths, in which 
the abounding promise of a life is unfulfilled; there are 
agonising diseases to which the human frame is subject, 
for which even medical science can find no adequate 
explanation; there are tragedies and miseries that seem 
to go far beyond the necessary consequences of human 
ill-desert ; and in face of these silence seems more fitting 


VI. ] THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF GOD 151 


than speech. There are ‘clouds and darkness round 
about Him,’ even though there are evidences for the 
belief that ‘ righteousness and judgment are the habitation 
of His throne.’ A complete solution is not possible, nor 
necessary ; if there be a sufficient solution to warrant the 
expectation that when we cease to see aS in a mirror 
darkly, and see face to face, there will be a complete 
solution. Here we walk by faith, and not sight; we are 
saved by hope. Having experienced the solution of the 
moral problem in himself, the Christian has warrant in 
believing that it can and will be solved in others; and if 
God can and is solving the problem of moral evil, faith is 
possible that the problem of physical evil will also be 
solved. Solvitur ambulando: the speculative must wait 
on the practical solution. H6ffding has suggested, in 
dealing with the Problems of Philosophy, that its four 
problems of consciousness, knowledge, reality, and value 
cannot be solved without an insoluble remainder, because 
the world itself is still in the making, and the interpreta- 
tion can be completed only with the reality. Christian 
faith must be reinforced by Christian hope. The solution 
of the problem of physical or moral evil in the individual 
life is excluded without the hope of immortality. Sin, 
sorrow, suffering, death are not explicable within the 
range of this earthly life. As this hope has comforted and 
sustained the soul, so in dealing with these problems it 
cannot be left out of account. The promise unfulfilled here 
in those removed by premature death, has we may con- 
fidently believe its fulfilment hereafter, and it will be a 
far greater and better. The affliction would not seem 
either light, or for a moment, did it not work out an 
exceeding, even an eternal, weight of glory. For humanity 
generally there is no solution of the problem of physical 
and moral evil, unless we can believe that there is a 
progress towards the coming Kingdom of God. We are 
witnessing the solidarity of humanity becoming more and 
more a reality; a common conscience is, although too 
slowly, taking possession of mankind ; through missionary 


152 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [cu. 


labour the Christian faith is spreading among all nations. 
The glory of the day is not yet upon us, but we catch 
glimpses of the dawn that justify faith, reinforced by hope, 
that the Father’s goodness will be at last fully revealed. 


III 


(1) The perfect personality of God in truth, blessedness, 
holiness and love—in a word, the Fatherhood—was not only 
revealed, but realised in Jesus. He not only taught the 
_ Fatherhood, but He lived it in His perfect personality as 
Son in knowledge, trust, surrender and fellowship. The 
revelation of the Fatherhood cannot be dissevered from 
the realisation of the Sonship, and the Sonship cannot be 
thought less divine than the Fatherhood. Those who 
take the name Father from the lips of Jesus, and fail to 
own the Sonship in His life, sever what in history was 
joined together. In the early Christian experience men 
rose to the Fatherhood by the true and living way of the 
Sonship. The certainty of the divine revelation in Christ 
is by His own claim bound up with the reality of His 
divinity. In what has been urged in the two previous 
sections the possibility of the divinity of Christ has been 
indicated, and the necessity of that divinity suggested. 

(i) If God be personal as man is, if God be perfect and 
man imperfect but progressive personality, if God be as 
love self-communicative, and man be receptive of such 
communication, it is not incredible nor unintelligible that 
there should be constituted a divine-human personality 
in which God and man meet and are one. The older 
Christology assumed not only the difference, but even 
the opposition of the divine and the human natures, and 
then put them side by side in the abstract unity of the 
person of Christ, so conceived as to offer no explanation 
of even the possibility of two so diverse natures combining. 
Hence this Christology has always wavered between the 
absorption of the human in the divine nature to secure the 
unity of the person, or the reduction of the personal unity 


VI. ] THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF GOD 153 


to an abstract term in order to maintain the distinction of 
the two natures. But if we think of both God and man 
as personal, and conceive personality in both as dynamic, 
not static, as capable in God of self-limitation, and in man 
of self-development ; if we think of both, because of their 
affinity, as mutually attractive, a downward movement 
of God in grace and an upward movement of man in faith, 
then the divine-human personality of Jesus becomes not 
only a possibility, but almost a necessity of our thought. 
A progressive incarnation through divine communicative- 
ness and human receptivity in the personal development 
of the historical Jesus the Christ is credible and intelligible. 

(ii) There is a speculation in which many Christian 
thinkers have indulged, and which may be mentioned here 
with cordial appreciation—+.e. that, even had there been no 
sin in the world, and no necessity for redemption, yet the 
creation and the revelation of God through it would not 
have been completed without an Incarnation; and truly 
what consummation of the Universe more rational can be 
conceived, or what completion of God’s purpose more 
worthy of His character as love can be believed, than that 
God should crown all His gifts in the gift of Himself under 
the conditions of His highest creature—man!?2 But surely 
the fact of sin and the need of redemption offer even a 
more convincing argument for the belief in the Divine 
Incarnation! How could we conceive in a more adequate 
form God’s acceptance of His responsibility as Creator, 
and still more as Father, for the freedom in which He 
created men that they might become His children, and 
for the consequences which that freedom abused by man 
involved, than that He should Himself participate in the 
sorrow and suffering which sin involved? God’s sacrifice 
in Christ is surely the convincing answer to the challenge 
of His goodness which is offered by physical and moral 

1 See the fuller development of this conception in the writer’s Studies 
in the Inner Life of Jesus: Constructive Conclusion, and The Christian 
Certainty amid the Modern Perplexity, chap. xii. ; also compare Forsyth’s 


The Person and Place of Jesus Christ, x., xi., xii. 
2 See Westcott’s The Epistles of St. John, pp. 285-328, 


154 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS _ [cn. 


evil. What solution of the problem could we think of 
more satisfying than that God should in Christ meet and 
overcome the world’s sin and consequent misery in the 
personal experience of the sacrifice, which is the channel 
of salvation for man? If no fitter close to the world’s 
evolution than God’s adequate personal self-revelation 
can be conceived, no worthier solution of the problem of 
evil in that world than God’s deliverance of man from 
evil, through His own endurance of it in self-sacrifice, can 
enter into the thoughts of man. The perfect revelation 
of God as Father, and the complete redemption of man 
as child of God, is surely end great enough to warrant 
faith in so great a means as the Divine Incarnation! 

(2) Christian faith was impelled onward in the confession 
it made. Jesus was the Christ, then the Lord, and lastly 
the Word or the Son. Since the historical personality 
Jesus, as regards the Divine Sonship incarnate in Him, 
had to find a place within the being of God, the conception 
of the divine nature was transformed. To that change 
of thought another factor in Christian experience also 
contributed ; at Pentecost the Christian Church became 
conscious of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, 
the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ. The ‘ holy enthu- 
siasm’ and the ‘holy energy’ that possessed believers, 
was felt to be the life of God Himself in man. Jesus 
revealed the Father as Son, and through faith in the 
grace of the Son, revealing the love of the Father, the 
Christian Church experienced the Koinonia, the fellowship, 
the common life of the Spirit of God. Whether the 
apostolic commission in Matthew xxviii. 18-20 be an 
authentic saying of Jesus, or expresses at so early a date 
as the publication of the Gospel the consciousness of the 
Christian Church, it witnesses how soon the trinitarian 
conception of God emerged. A still earlier and even 
more suggestive witness is the apostolic benediction in 
2 Corinthians xiii. 14, which appears to the writer the best 
statement of the doctrine of the Godhead, as it is not 
speculative, but experimental; deals not with abstract 


VI. J THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF GOD 155 


definitions, but concrete functions. Thought may compel 
us to infer the essential Trinity, but we must start from 
and keep close to the economic Trinity in Christian 
experience. 

(i) In speculative constructions of the doctrine the 
necessity of the Fatherhood and the Sonship, the subject 
and the object, the loving and the loved, have been 
demonstrated, but the proof of the need of the third person 
in the Godhead has usually halted. In the history of the 
development of the doctrine of the Godhead the confession 
of belief in the Holy Spirit was formal, and it was only the 
heresy of Macedonius which compelled the Church to 
define that belief, and in that definition the intellectual 
interest of symmetry rather than any vital necessity of 
piety was gratified. The explanation seems to be this, 
that to the objective revelation of the Father and the 
objective redemption by the Son, there did not correspond 
an adequate subjective response in personal piety. To 
apprehend and to appreciate the doctrine of the Holy 
Spirit there is needed an intense vitality and an abounding 
vigour of the inner life; doctrine and ritual must be 
supplemented by piety. Soon after the Apostolic Age 
the holy enthusiasm and the holy energy of the primitive 
community was suppressed; an ebb followed the flood 
tide of spirituality. The inner life must be so rich and 
strong as to be felt as the very life of God in the soul, 
and then the belief in the Spirit of God as the presence 
and power of God in the spiritual activities of man 
becomes a necessity for thought. 

(ii) When we study the New Testament we do find some 
indistinctness in the language about the living Christ 
and the Holy Spirit. It sometimes appears as though 
Christ and the Spirit were identified. The Spirit is not 
only the Spirit of God, but also the Spirit of Christ, and 
in 2 Corinthians iii. 17 Paul makes the statement ‘the 
Lord is the Spirit.’ In view, however, of the distinction 
he does clearly make elsewhere between the Lord and the 
Spirit. we must regard the statement as a condensed 


156 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS [cH, 


declaration of the dependence of the experience of the 
Spirit’s transforming power on the believer’s communion 
with the Living Lord. It is where there is faith in Christ 
that the Spirit dwells and works. What distinction can 
we make? The Son is God objectively revealed in the 
historical personality of Jesus, and the communion with 
the living Christ is a distinctly personal communion ; but 
the Spirit is God subjectively realised in the illumination, 
aspiration, and activity of the human personality. In 
Christian experience the fellowship with the living Christ 
and the fellowship of the Spirit of God will blend together ; 
and it is only in reflection on that experience that we can 
make such a distinction. As Christian faith was com- 
pelled to confess God incarnate in Jesus Christ, so was it 
compelled to confess God within the believer’s Own experi- 
ence as the Spirit of God. For our present purpose it is 
not necessary to dwell on the distinction presented in the 
New Testament between the abnormal gifts of the Spirit 
as in the speaking with tongues, and the normal working 
of the Spirit in sanctification, for in both there is this 
intimate participation of God in the inner life of man, 
which we have found to be the distinctive characteristic 
of the Spirit’s function. 

(3) The doctrine of the Trinity is rooted in Christian 
experience, and can be apprehended only where that 
experience is appreciated. Hence speculative constructions 
apart from religious interests are always unsatisfactory. 
An attempt may be made to construe the doctrine in the 
religious interests. 
/ (i) It has already been shown that man must think 
(God as both transcendent and yet immanent, as above 

and beyond, and yet in and through nature and history. 
A transcendence that is not deistically conceived must 
not be separated from an immanence of God; and an 
immanence that is not pantheistically represented must 
be related to a transcendence. This difference-in-unity 
there must be. Again, as man distinguishes himself from 
the world, the divine immanence to be complete must 


) a 


V1] THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF GOD 157 


for him be both objective and subjective, revealed in the 
world and realised in himself. We have surely then 
these moments in the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. 
The transcendent God, yet related to the immanent in 
indissoluble unity, is the Father ; the objectively immanent 
God is the Logos, or Word of God, God revealing Himself 
in nature and history, but disclosing the inmost secret of 
the life of God as holy love in the Incarnate Son; the 
subjectively immanent God is the Spirit of God, imparting 
the life of God as holy love in the enlightening, cleansing, 
and renewing of the soul of man, and revealing that life 
again objectively in the community of believers. But it 
is the one God who is as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit 
revealed and realised; and the difference must be so 
conceived in unity as to preserve and confirm monotheism. 

(ii) But if it be objected that what has been set forth 
is only an economic and not an essential trinity, two 
considerations may be offered in reply. First of all, the 
distinction between economic and essential trinity, con- 
venient as it is, where what God is in Himself and what 
God reveals Himself as being are conceived as possibly 
different, disappears as soon as we recognise that when we 
speak of revelation we do not mean concealment; that 
it is to think of God as less than Infinite and Absolute 
Truth if we conceive Him as revealing anything but the 
reality of Himself. All certainty and confidence would 
be lost in the religious life if God in Himself can be 
thought as other than He makes Himself known to be in 
His revelation. If He is revealed temporally as Father, 
Son, and Spirit, then He is eternally Father, Son, and 
Spirit. 

(iii) But as has been already suggested, we cannot 


conceive God as personal without conceiving Him as | 
difference in unity. We cannot think of Him as conscious * 


without the distinction of subject and object, as truth with- 
out the knowing and the known, as holiness without the 
purpose and the realisation, as love without the loving 
and the loved. But the difference must also be ever the 


158 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [cu. 


expression and realisation of unity. The Hegelian thesis, 
antithesis, and synthesis does represent the movement of 
thought, life, love; and, however imperfectly, suggests 
to us the Father, Son, and Spirit in the one God. The 
writer does not pretend that here we can do more than 
‘speak only that we may not keep silence,’ but at least 
a trinitarian conception seems more rational than a 
unitarian. 

(4) The formula for the doctrine of the Trinity in the 
ecumenical creeds is three persons in one substance, and 
for the doctrine of Christ two natures (or substances) in 
one person. 

(i) The terminology here is ambiguous, because sub- 
stance in the Godhead and in Christ cannot mean exactly 
the same, nor can person. If we use substance in Christ 
as we do in the Godhead, we sacrifice the unity of His 
person ; and if we use person in the Godhead in the same 
sense as in Christ, we sacrifice the unity of the substance. 
Again, substance is too physical a conception, and does not 
suggest the mental, moral, and spiritual reality with which 
we are concerned in both doctrines. Further, ‘ person’ 
did not, when the creeds were formed, mean what it now 
means, a separate individual. The formule now tend to 
encourage a tritheism that represents Father, Son, and 
Spirit as partners in a firm, or members of a family, and a 
dualism regarding the person of Christ which represents 
Him as part God and part man, as now thinking and 
acting as God, and now feeling and wishing as man. 

(ii) The starting-point for any statement of the doctrine 
to-day must be the personal unity of the Godhead and 
the personal unity of Christ. Not substance but person- 
ality is the adequate category for the Godhead; and the 
‘person’ of Christ must be conceived, not as an abstract 
bond of union between two separate concrete substances, 
but concretely in the full sense we assign to personality, 
as one divine-human personality. Even although properly 
the word personality should connote the qualities that 
belong to person, and person the reality so denoted ; 


VI.) _ THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF GOD 159 


owing to the use of the word ‘ person > for Father, Son, and 
Spirit in the Godhead, and the vague sense of the same 
term as used of Christ, it might be an advantage if we 
could use the term ‘personality’ for the unity of the 
Godhead and the unity of Christ, as thus we might 
emphasise the fact that in each case we mean all the 
qualities, the full reality that the term connotes. 

(iii) If, as has been insisted, God and man are personal, 
and there is such affinity and such attraction of God and 
man that the unity of God and man in the divine human 
personality of Christ is conceivable, then the sooner we 
get rid of the duality of the two substances in His person 
from our thought, the better will it be for us in appre- 
hending His significance, and appreciating His value. 
We may speak of two natures, as long as we understand 
thereby the personal communicativeness of God and the 
personal receptivity of man, a distinction that does not 
hinder but secures the personal unity. 

(iv) The writer must confess that his great difficulty 
in stating the doctrine of the Trinity has arisen from the 
use of the word ‘person’ to express the difference of 
Father, Son, and Spirit, as it suggests separate individuals, 
and so makes God appear a generic and not a personal 
unity. He has failed, however, to find any term that 
would appear more suitable. ‘ Mode,’ ‘ Principle,’ 
‘Subsistence,’ are too abstract and impersonal terms, 
and suggest too little distinction, just as ‘ person’ in the 
current use of the term suggests too much. Probably we 
must continue using the term ‘person,’ but guard our- 
selves in our thought and speech against the identifying 
of person and individual, and so tending to tritheism. 

(v) In recent reflection on the subject the difficulty 
has been relieved in some degree by the modern conception 
of personality as by its very nature social, or of society as 
organic, for these are correlative conceptions. The New 
Testament phrase, the Koinonia of the Holy Spirit, means 
not only the common life of God and the individual believer 
in the Spirit of God, but also, and even more, the common 


160 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [cn. 


life of all believers in that Spirit. Paul’s conception of 
the Christian society in 1 Corinthians xii. is organic, a body 
of which all believers are members, and of which the 
common life is love. Thus he anticipates the modern 
conception of society, which is proving so fruitful as a 
motive of social reform. Would not a society perfectly 
organic be one and the same as a perfect social personality ? 
A corporate consciousness need not absorb, but may be 
the completion .of individual consciousnesses. With all 
diffidence the writer would suggest that it is in this direc- 
tion that we may look for the solution of our problem. 
If we strip the term ‘ person’ of all suggestion of isolating 
individuality, and think of each as social personality, 
may not the perfect organic society of Father, Son, and 
Spirit be thought as the perfect social personality of the 
one God ? 

(vi) To the writer the difficulty seems more practical 
than theoretical. Our morality and our religion are still 
so individualistic, that an organic society and a social 
personality seem to us still meaningless and worthless 
abstractions. But were we to live in the Koinonia of the 
Spirit within the Christian community, realising fully the 
spiritual unity of all believers ; were we, having been thus 
disciplined and developed in social personality within the 
organic society of the Church, to extend the scope of our 
Koinonia to the world around so that all mankind might 
be brought into the Christian society, we should be better 
fitted to conceive, because worthier of the revelation of 
the one God as Father, Son, and Spirit. 

(vii) The revelation of the Father has been given in the 
teaching and life of Jesus; the revelation of the Son has 
also come to us in the personal work of Christ; the 
revelation of the Spirit is still being made in individual 
experience and the Christian community, and that 
revelation is not yet complete, for even Christian saints 
and seers have been far from proving perfect organs of 
the divine as Christ Himself was. When that revelation 
is perfected in a Christian Church in which each lives in 


vI.] THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF GOD 161 


afl, and all in each; when the body of Christ is in the 
Spirit one as Father and Son are one, then dare we not 
believe the unity of Father, Son, and Spirit will be realised 
as we fail to do now, and then God as one in Father, Son, 
and Spirit will be all in all, ‘ the far-off divine event to 
which the whole creation moves ?* 


162 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS (cH. 


CHAPTER VII 
THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF MAN 


I 


(1) In the Christian view, in which God and man are 
related as Father and child, as we think of God we must 
think of man ; accordingly in dealing with the personality 
of God we have anticipated in some measure the contents 
of this chapter; but the conception of personality, as — 
applied to man, may be more fully developed than has 
hitherto been necessary. What are the marks of 
personality ? 

(i) The first mark is unity; while man thinks, feels, 
wills, it is as one subject ; however manifold the contents of 
man’s consciousness, the consciousness of the one self 
thinking, feeling, willing in all, makes the manifold one. 
It seems one of the mare’s nests of modern physiological 
psychology to take the pathological cases of divided 
personality as showing that personality is a multiplicity 
and not a unity; surely it is in mental health and not 
disease that we learn what mind is. Again the psychology 
that treats thought, feeling, and will as separate faculties, 
and then finds some difficulty in relating them, is a mental 
abstraction that has no relation to concrete reality. Still 
more, the psychology that takes thoughts, feelings, and 
volitions as the elements of consciousness, and then tries 
cunningly to compound them into self-consciousness, has 
lost its object in its method. The constitution of mind 
is not atomic, but organic. A mental fact has meaning 
and worth only as the function of the self. It is necessary 
to insist on the unity of personality, not only against 
erroneous tendencies in psychology, but still more against — 


vil. ] THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF MAN 163 


false phraseology in religion. Head and Heart, Reason 
and Conscience, Soul and Spirit have been opposed to 
one another with disastrous results. Personality is liable 
to one-sided development, intellectual, emotional, or 
volitional, and it may be necessary sometimes to condemn 
such one-sidedness, but this is not effectively done by 
another one-sidedness. In religion the whole personality 
must be exercised and realised. 

(ii) A second mark of personality is identity; while we 
are not continuously conscious, yet there is-a continuity 
in our personal life. The self of to-day remembers the 
self of yesterday, and expects the self of to-morrow as 
one and the same. Without such identity memory, 
character, progress would be impossible. A man is 
ashamed of, and blames himself for, the sins of his youth ; 
a man fears and shrinks from the judgment on his sins that 
the future may hold. So goodness binds past, present, 
and future in gladness and hope. This identity must be 
insisted on against an error that is sometimes met with 
in extreme evangelical circles. The language of the New 
Testament about the new birth (John iii. 3-8), the new 
creation, the old things that have passed away, and the 
things that have all become new (2 Cor. v. 17) is taken 
with prosaic literalness, as affirming a personal discon- 
tinuity between the saved and the unsaved man. The 
late Henry Drummond in his chapter on ‘ Biogenesis,’ in 
his book Natural Law in the Spiritual World, gave a quasi- 
scientific sanction to this error, in which assuredly 
dogmatism rides rough-shod over reality. However great 
the difference grace makes, it does not destroy the personal 
identity ; and the ‘new’ man soon discovers how closely 
he is still bound to the ‘old,’ when the old temptations 
again are clamorous, and the old habits once more assert 


- themselves. 


(iii) This identity is not, however, static, but dynamic ; 
there is continuity, but not fixity ; in development continuity 
is maintained amid change. From childhood there is 
progress through boyhood or girlhood and adolescence 


164 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS _ [cn. 


to maturity ; and then there is decay, physical, but not 
necessarily mental, moral, or spiritual, unless when disease 
affects the mind, until death, which for the Christian, 
however, means the beginning of further progress. The 
religious life is subject to development also, and we are 
only now in religious education giving adequate attention 
to the stages of that development. Here again we may 
touch on a practical error which arises from the neglect of 
this fact of development. Through misunderstanding of 
the language of Scripture, and disregard of the special 
conditions of the Christian Church in the Apostolic Age, 
some preachers and teachers insist on conversion, such 
as it is in adult experience, as a necessary condition of the 
beginning of the Christian life, and in religious education 
attempts were sometimes made to force such an adult 
experience on little children; there is no reason why, if 
Christian influences are brought to bear on childhood from 
the beginning, there may not be a growth in grace corre- 
sponding to, though of course not identical with, the 
natural development. In adolescence it is found that 
there is exceptional responsiveness to religious influence ; 
and, where there has already been such growth in grace, 
there is sometimes seen a definite decision for the Christian 
life, confirming and not contradicting the earlier develop- 
ment ; but, where such growth in grace has been absent, 
there is often met with what may be truly called conversion, 
a moral and spiritual change that gives a new direction 
to the subsequent development.! Apart from this par- 
ticular instance, the importance of this fact of develop- 
ment for religion cannot be overestimated ; for while it 
holds out ever the hope of change, it forbids the expectation 
that that change will be or must be sudden in most cases ; 
and yet it does not preclude the possibility of even sudden 
change. As in nature evolution has not been uniform, 
but there have been fresh stages which cannot be regarded 
as merely the result of the previous stages, so in religious 
development the unexpected, and largely inexplicable, 


1 See Starbuck, The Psychology of Religion. 


ee 


Vu. | THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF MAN 165 


cannot be excluded. On the one hand, as human 
personality is conceived in the Christian view, there is in 
it unexhausted possibility, moral and spiritual, which may 
be actualised far beyond what the previous development 
would lead us to expect, and enable us to explain; and on 
the other, human personality is in contact with divine 
personality, and so may receive therefrom a stimulus to 
so great and swift a progress that it can without exag- 
geration be described as creative. But whether swift or 
slow, development is a necessary feature of personality 
in man. 

(iv) This development is both organic and conscious. 
Even in the organic there is discernible a teleology, a 
selection, combination, and direction of means towards an 
end. How far teleology implies consciousness, however 
rudimentary, we need not inquire, as our immediate 
concern is conscious development. This conscious develop- 
ment is conditioned by the organic ; for mental, moral, and 
even religious growth is related to physical. Materialism 
treats mind as the product of brain; but into this con- 
troversy we need not now enter. Two statements of 
authority will serve as a reason for our not taking the 
materialistic contention into further account. Sir Oliver 
Lodge suggests that life transcends and utilises physical 
forces ; and the late Professor James insists that brain is 
not the productive cause of thought, but only its permissive 
or transmissive organ.2 The theory with which most 
psychologists conduct their inquiries is that of ‘ pyscho- 
physical parallelism,’ the recognition of a correspondence 
between brain processes and mental without asserting a 
causal relation; but the teleology in the processes of life, 
as well as perception through sensation and movement by 
volition, suggest a closer connection than the term parallel- 
ism indicates. Consciousness is not constant, and yet 
there is continuity of mental life. We must accordingly 


1 See Ward's Naturalism and Agnosticism for a full discussion of this 
subject, especially Lec. xix. 
2 Lodge’s Life and Matter, p, 198; James’s Human Immortality, p. 32; 


166 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS [cH. 


recognise what has been more recently called subliminal 
consciousness, but Sir William Hamilton spoke of as 
mental latency.t| Memory retains the impressions of the 
past, and we are not conscious of them, but can recall 
them into consciousness. We may have all the data for 
the solution of some problem present in our consciousness, 
but we cannot combine them for the desired result. We 
turn away our attention, or even we ‘sleep on it,’ and, as 
in a flash of insight, the solution is discovered. Behind 
what seem to us sudden inspirations there lies probably 
considerable mental activity of which we are not aware. 
There may come into our consciousness impressions of 
the past of which we were not conscious at the time. 
Attempts have been made to find the locus of religion, 
inspiration, and even of incarnation 2 within the subliminal 
consciousness ; and to represent man as through it related 
to a wider environment than consciousness can reach. 
But we must be careful not to confuse man’s spiritual 
and his organic environment ; his relations to God are not 
to be embraced in the same term as his dependence on his 
body. If this mental latency be due to man’s personality 
being now dependent in its activities on a physical organism, 
it is not here that his communion with God is to be placed. 
We should rather distinguish a supraliminal consciousness 
from this subliminal. It is because man is incarnate 
personality, conditioned and limited by its organism, that 
the spiritual environment is not consciously realised at 
all times, that his relation to God reveals itself in 
momentary intuitions and occasional inspirations, and 
not in an unclouded vision and an uninterrupted con- 
sciousness. That man is related to such spiritual environ- 
ment, larger and richer than can now fully enter his 
consciousness, must from the Christian standpoint be 
maintained. But it is not by less consciousness, but by 
more, that his contact with that environment will become 


1 Lectures on Metaphysics, xviii. 
2 See Sanday’s Christologies Ancient and Modern, vi. and vii. ; James’s 
The Varieties of Religious Kuperience, pp. 511-15. 


Vit. ] THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF MAN 167 


closer. God enters into man’s thought not through the 
cellar of the subliminal, but through the upper chamber 
of aspiration and endeavour. ‘This we shall see still more 
clearly if we now concentrate our attention on man’s 
conscious development.? 

(v) Conscious development implies knowledge of an 
end, and choice of means to reach that end. The first we 
may call man’s ideality, the second is his liberty. In his 
thought man is conscious of the end of truth, in his feeling 
of the end of happiness, or, to distinguish this ideal from 
sensuous enjoyment, blessedness, in his willing the end of 
holiness ; in the expression of his whole personality out- 
ward of the end of love. Man is rational, moral, social. 
As his environment is not only human but divine, he is 
also religious, as he seeks to enter into relation with God 
as well as his fellow-men; and in that relation to God as 
the reality of all his ideals he has the assurance of their 
realisation.2 Eucken has distinguished between universal 
and characteristic religion. ‘To realise his ideals man seeks 
relation to God the reality of them; this is universal 
religion; but above and beyond this he has a personal 
need of God, which only a personal communion with God 
can meet; this is characteristic religion.2 Christianity 
recognises all these ideals as belonging properly to human 
personality as the end of its development, and for it 
characteristic religion is the relation of God as Father to 
man as child in Christ. 

(2) The question of man’s liberty is of such importance 
for the Christian view that it demands a fuller treatment 
than any of the characteristics of human personality so 
far noted. This closer consideration is also required by 
the insistent challenge of man’s claim of freedom. 

(i) About the testimony of consciousness itself there 
can be no doubt. Man is conscious of choosing between 
what presents itself to him as right, and what he judges 


1 See The Christian Certainty, p. 446 ff. 
2 See Inge, Faith and its Psychology, especially chap. xiii. 
3 See Der Wahrheitsgehalt der Religion. 


168 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS _ [cn. 


wrong; if he chooses wrong he blames himself, feels 
ashamed of himself, and, if he is religious as well as moral, 
looks for God’s judgment, and further, if he believes the 
Christian Gospel, seeks God’s forgiveness. Remorse and 
repentance are realities of human life. Not only does a 
man so judge himself; but even although he cannot him- 
self be conscious that others are choosing, yet he judges 
their actions as equally resulting from choice. Social 
censure, legal penalty, personal reputation, all assume 
that man’s acts are his, and that he is responsible for them. 
This unequivocal testimony might in such a question be 
regarded as final ; but it has been often challenged. 

(ii) There is the old dispute between determinism and 
indeterminism, in which the question is wrongly stated on 
both sides. We cannot conceive action that is undeter- 
mined—that is, action without any motive or reason; 
and in so far as the defence of liberty was committed to 
such indeterminism it deserved to fail. The question is 
not: is action determined or undetermined? but how is 
action determined ? Is it the whole personality, or some 
part of the personality by itself, that acts? The determinist 
position depends altogether on the false abstraction of 
faculties, or even thoughts, feelings, volitions from the 
self, to which reference has already been made. Actions 
were said to be determined by the strongest motive. A 
number of competing desires were supposed to be in 
conflict, and the strongest of these was assumed at last 
to carry the day, and so determine the will to the action. 
There was besides this false abstraction of the self that 
desires and wills from its desires and volitions, a reasoning 
in a circle; the motive was judged the strongest, because 
it determined the will, and it determined the will because 
it was the strongest. A more accurate psychology dis- 
poses of all this sophistry. Desires are the self desiring, 
and the range and the quality of the desires depend on 
the character of the self. It is not correct to speak of 
competing motives, for till the choice is made, the desires 
cannot be said to move the will. The motive is the 


ee a ne 


vil. } THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF MAN 169 


desire to which effect is given in the choice. Which 
desire becomes the motive does not depend on the relative 
strength of the desires; but once more the character of 
the self determines to which desire effect will be given. 
We may say, if we will, that the will gives effect to the 
desire that is the motive; but here again we run the risk 
of false abstraction. As the desire is the self desiring, 
and the motive the self moved to choice, so the will is the 
self willing. In the whole process we are concerned only 
with the self. 

(iii) It may be objected, however, that in this argument 
we are making a mysterious self the refuge of our ignorance. 
What determines this self so to desire, choose, act ? Self- 
realisation is the end of self; but that self-realisation may 
be sought in the gratification of appetites, ambition, etc., 
on the one hand, or the pursuit of the ideals on the other 
hand. The self in choosing determines whether its self- 
realisation in the lower or the higher sense will be effected 
by the gratification of this desire or that ; and the desire 
with which it identifies its good becomes the motive of 
its action. But can we arrest our analysis even here? 
What determines the self to identify itself either with the 
lower impulse or the higher aspiration ? Blatchford, for 
instance, would promptly reply, the heredity and the 
environment; for man is but a puppet moved by his 
parentage or his circumstances. It is not at all necessary 
to deny the influence of both these factors in human 
development. Children do resemble their parents, not 
only physically, but also morally and mentally ; this we 
must admit, whether with Spencer we affirm or with 
Weismann we deny the transmission of acquired character- 
istics. But two considerations may make us pause before 
we ascribe moral resemblance to physical heredity. 
Firstly, unless organism determines personality to a 
greater extent than appears probable, we cannot even 
conceive the vital mechanism by which moral character- 
istics could be transmitted from parent to offspring. The 
Mendelian theory is based on physical characteristics, such 


170 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS [cH. 


as size, colour, etc., and it is a rash and bold assumption 
that vices and virtues can be accounted for similarly, 
Secondly, the environment affects the development of 
the child most potently in the earliest years, and the moral 
resemblances may be due to parental influence after birth, 
rather than to heredity before. It has been proved again 
and again that, if the child of evil parents be removed in 
infancy or early childhood to a good moral environment, 
there is no moral resemblance to them. Heredity cannot 
be proved an inescapable moral fate. Just as the great 
majority of children are born physically healthy, and 
infantile mortality is due to evil conditions, so we may 
maintain that as regards moral heredity children are born 
without any moral determination for good or evil. Of 
the moral potency of the environment, especially in the 
earliest years, we cannot speak too strongly. But work 
such as that of Dr. Barnardo or of the Salvation Army 
does show that there may be moral recovery even when 
an evil moral development has begun, if sufficiently potent 
moral influences are brought to bear. Circumstances are 
not omnipotent over the human soul; and there are 
instances enough of triumph over environment to contra- 
dict the assertion that the self is and must be what the 
surroundings make it. 

(iv) The older Christian theology maintained a doctrine 
of original sin and total depravity which committed it to 
a denial of man’s liberty. Man was free only to do evil, 
and only when renewed by grace did he become capable 
of goodness. This fact was explained in three ways, 
according to the view of the soul maintained. Traducian- 
wsm, held by Tertullian, was undoubtedly the simplest and 
most consistent theory. It affirmed that the soul as well 
as the body was transmitted from parent to child. The 
theory of pre-existence did not account for the origin of sin 
by heredity, but by a moral lapse of the individual in a 
previous state of existence. This view of Origen Julius 
Miiller has attempted to revive in modern times. Creation- 
tsm, the view held by Anselm and the Schoolmen, assumes 


vu. | THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF MAN 171 


the divine creation of each individual soul; and involves 
the difficulty that original sin can be explained only as 
either the result of the contact of the pure soul with the 
body defiled by heredity, or the penalty inflicted by God 
on each soul as the result of Adam’s transgression. The 
exaggerated views of total depravity which we meet with 
in some Christian writings are due to the mistake of taking 
the Scripture accounts of the moral corruption of the 
pagan world as descriptive of man’s natural moral con- 
dition. If we ascribe to children the lust and cruelty and 
other abominations of a decadent civilisation, we must 
certainly assign to them original sin in a very large 
measure. Butif, on the contrary, we take Jesus’ estimate 
of childhood, and if, instead of allowing theory to over- 
ride fact, we observe children carefully, and make due 
allowance for the immediate influence of the evil in their 
environment, we shall probably reach the conclusion that 
they are not born with any manifest tendency to evil 
rather than good. And as has just been said above, even 
the evil that shows itself in early years we may ascribe to 
environment rather than to heredity. To this question 
we must return, but at this stage of our argument it was 
necessary to make clear that Christian theology need not 
regard itself committed to any view that substitutes for 
liberty determination of the personality by heredity or 
environment. 

(v) But if it be admitted that heredity and environment 
do not determine personality, it may be further urged 
that a man’s present is bound by his past; he acts and 
is expected to act according to his character. Repeated 
action becomes habit, and habits combine to fix character. 
It is true that in our moral judgments of men we do expect 
them to act according to character. If we hear of a moral 
offence which has been committed by a good man, we are 
at first incredulous, and say it is morally impossible ; and 
we accept the fact only when the evidence leaves us no 
escape. We are surprised at a worthy deed done by a 


1 Matthew xviii. 3, 4; xix. 14. 


172 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS [CH 


man whose course of life has been bad. There is consis- 
tency and uniformity to a high degree in human con- 
duct ; and we act, and must act, on such general judgments 
of our fellow-men. From the Christian point of view we 
do not assert an unconditional liberty for any man. A man 
is limiting his moral possibility by the character he is 
forming. But the Christian Gospel declares the possibility 
of repentance and conversion, and summons man to turn 
from the evil past to a good future. Two reasons justify 


that summons. In the first place, a man’s character, as it: 


is known to others, or even as it is known to himself, is 
not his whole self; personality as such is a possibility of 


ead 


development which cannot be regarded as exhausted at 


any stage. One of the merits assigned to Charles Dickens, 
for instance, is that he makes us see some good even in 
the worst characters. There are dissatisfactions with the 
evil the soul accepts, and aspirations for the good it 
refuses, that may with the proper adequate stimulus 


become dominant motives. It is the mechanical view 


applied in a sphere where it is literally an impertinence, 
that leads us to think of the personality as a fixed sum of 


past experiences. Personal development is creative evolu- — 


tion, the actualisation of possibility till then unrecognised 
even in self-consciousness. A man does not know to 
what badness he may fall, or to what goodness he may 
rise; still less can his fellows tell him. As God is the 
reality of man’s ideals, we may say that in the measure 
in which a man is seeking to realise these ideals especially 
in personal relation to God, his personality ceases to be 
measurable and calculable, and gains a relative infinitude. 
Secondly, in religion man is in contact with and under the 
influence of his divine environment, the God in whom 
he lives, and moves, and has his being; and here the evil 
in the man finds an expulsive, and the good an impulsive 
force which cannot be estimated. Even if heredity, 
environment, and character combine to hold a man in 
moral bondage, yet if he turn from sin to God, if he, 
however faint his aspiration or feeble his choice, identify 


Vil. | THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF MAN 173 


himself for his good not with his clamorous appetites, but 
with the call of God to repentance and faith, the grace of 
God will rescue him from that bondage, and restore to him 
his liberty to trust, love, and serve God freely. 

(3) There is another characteristic of human personality 
which must here be mentioned, although the full treat- 
ment must be reserved for the last chapter. If, on the 
one hand, the relation of the organism to the personality 
be not productive but transmissive, if life transcends body ; 
and if, on the other hand, man is engaged in a realisation 
of ideals of absolute value which is never in this present 
life completed, we are warranted in concluding that, on 
the one hand, the dissolution of the organism does not 
necessitate the destruction of the personality, and on the 
other hand, the value of the ideals being realised guarantees 
that the personal development will not be arrested by 
death, but will be continued and completed in a future 
life, This, in brief, is the argument for immortality in its 
negative and positive aspect, which must afterwards be 
developed in detail; but which is here given to show that 
the conception of personality that has been sketched leads 
inevitably to this hope. The Christian faith does not 
contradict, but confirms the hope ; and affords convincing 
reasons for it in the Resurrection of Christ Himself, and 
the eternal life of believers in Him, which lift it far above 
a conjecture into a certainty. In this conception of 
personality Christian faith can join hands with philosophical 
idealism, although it does not assert liberty uncondi- 
tionally, recognises man’s sinfulness more adequately, 
maintains the possibility of conversion still more con- 
fidently, and gives firmer assurance to the hope of 
immortality. 


tm 


(1) In dealing with the Christian view of man it is 
necessary to emphasise several features of human per- 
sonality more fully than a philosophical treatment would 
demand. 


174 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS (CH. 


(i) First of all, the reality of man’s sinfulness. must be 
asserted, for the Christian salvation is supremely deliver- 
ance from sin unto God. And this sinfulness must be 
defined religiously and not morally only. The injury man 
does to himself in the wrong choice may be spoken of as 
vice; the wrong he inflicts on others as crime ; but sin is 
a term which gets its distinctive meaning from man’s 
relation to God as moral perfection, holy love. It is not 
only disobedience of the law of God, but it is distrust of 
His love. A man may be morally respectable, and yet 
religiously sinful. Blameless of vice, uncharged with 
crime, he is nevertheless guilty of sin if he lives as though 
there were no God; for we are made for God’s companion- 
ship, and we fall short of the end of our being if we do not 
glorify Him. It is necessary to insist on this to-day, as 
there is a widespread tendency to ignore the claim of 
religion on the soul. Ethical societies are carrying on a 
propaganda in favour of morality without the religious 
sanctions, and even men themselves religious think that, 
so long as a man is moral, it does not matter whether he 
recognises the existence, submits to the authority, and 
accepts the grace of God. The elder brother in the 
parable of Jesus,! because his heart was estranged from 
his father, was sinful even as the prodigal; and so from 
the Christian standpoint not to know, trust, love, and 
obey God in the filial relation is to sin. 

(ii) While the Christian ideal quickens conscience, so 
that the inward motive no less than the outward act is 
judged ; and the Christian Gospel even in offering forgive- 
ness and holiness stimulates penitence and humility, so 
that the reality of sin is more keenly felt, and more deeply 
mourned by each believer, Christian theology in the 
past has been guilty, as has already been indicated, of 
unreality in much of its talk about total depravity. 
Man is never altogether evil, and if he were, there 
could be no hope of his recovery. It is with the 
good in each man, memories of saintly parents, regrets 


1 Luke xv. 11-32, 


Se eon 


vil.] THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF MAN 175 


for lost innocence, shame at present degradation, desire 
for amendment, that the Gospel finds its points of 
contact. 


‘Down in the human heart, crushed by the tempter, 
Feelings lie buried that grace may restore.’ 


Conversion is not literally creative, for the personality 
preserves its identity ; but the good, however held down 
in the past life, gains the mastery, and the evil, though 
kept in check in the new life, is not at once extinguished. 
Sincere and severe as a man’s judgment of himself should 
be, yet Christian theology does not glorify God by libelling 


man. However great the moral and religious change of 


conversion, it does not begin an entirely new personal 
development, but is a first stage in one personal develop- 
ment. Just as after conversion no man is absolutely good, 
so before conversion no man was absolutely bad. The 
quickened conscience of the converted man will see more 
evil in the previous life than was seen before; but the 
fact that he at all responded to God’s grace shows that his 
life was not only evil, without any good at all. 

(iii) The emphasis that the Christian Gospel puts on the 
reality of sin, and the necessity of conversion from sin to 
God, does not depend on any particular theory of the 
origin of sin. Opponents of the evangelical theology, and 
some of its unwise defenders, make the doctrines of grace 
rest on the foundation of the doctrine of the Fall. In view 
of assured results of modern scholarship it is impossible 
to maintain as literal history the narratives in Genesis i.-i11. 
We now know that these stories are borrowed from 
Babylonian mythology, although stripped of polytheism, 
and clothed with monotheism in the telling. Even if we 
could take them literally, does the cause—the eating of 
an apple—seem adequate to the effect—the sinfulness of 
the human race? It is vain labour to interpret the nar- 
ratives allegorically, and to assume some definite event 
in the evolution of the race, when the right course was 
abandoned for the wrong. Even assuming, as we may, 


176 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [cu. 


the unity of the human race, its common descent, Christian 
theology is more prudent in not committing itself to any 
such conjecture. The Old Testament affirms man’s sin- 
fulness, but does not base its affirmations on the story 
of the Fall. It is only in some of the later Jewish writings 
that the story is mentioned. Jesus in His teaching speaks 
of man as diseased, and so needing Him as the physician 
(Mark ii. 17), and as lost, and so needing to be sought and 
saved by Him (Luke xix. 10). That Paul believed the 
story of the Fall, and used it in explanation of the 
universality of sin and death, cannot be questioned ; but 
still it is to be observed that in his argument in Romans 
i.-ill. he reaches his conclusion that ‘all have sinned and 
come short of the glory of God’ as an induction from the 
moral condition of Jew and Gentile alike, not as a deduction 
from the story of the Fall. When he does introduce that 
narrative in the fifth chapter, it is not to prove man’s 
universal sinfulness, but to show how much more 
efficacious Christ’s grace unto life must be than even 
Adam’s transgression unto death has been. The reality 
and the universality of sin is a fact of experience, and is 
unaffected by any view held of the beginning of sin. 

(4) Is there any explanation of that universality ? 

(i) We are learning to-day how potent is the moral 
environment on the moral development, and that the 
moral environment is constituted by what is described as 
social heredity, not the physical connection of parent and 
child, but the transmission from generation to generation 
in each society of customs, standards, institutions. It is 
probable that to a very great extent, greater than has 
hitherto been recognised by Christian theology, the child 
is morally made or marred by this environment or social 
heredity. There is, to use Ritschl’s phrase, a kingdom of 
evil, of which the child may very soon become a subject. 
That environment is more potent than heredity is a hopeful 
fact for human progress, as we can improve the environ- 
ment more efiectively than the heredity; but it is a fact 


1 See The Ritschlian Theology, pp. 303-4. 


vu | THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF MAN 177 


that the orthodox Christian theology has not adequately 
taken into account, although there are signs of a welcome 
change. 

(ii) But we have not escaped heredity in our explanation, 
even if we have widened its scope from the parents of 
whom, to the society in which, the child is born. It may 
be asked what began the kingdom of evil? ‘To answer 
the question, two lines of inquiry have been followed. 
It is said that the savage represents the primitive man, 
and that the primitive man was slowly evolving out of 
the merely animal to the human stage. The vices of the 
savage are but the survival in man of animal appetites. or 
impulses to self-satisfaction or self-defence ; natural and 
legitimate in the animal, these survivals become immora 
and illegitimate only when a stage of social development 
has been reached when regard for others should put a 
check on sensuality or cruelty. As the rudimentary 
conscience—which is, to begin with, the sense of tribal 
relations, and such regard for others as these may impose 
—develops, the animal appetites or impulses that come 
into conflict with it come to be regarded as sinful. It is an 
assumption, however, that the savage represents primitive 
man; in evolution stagnation and decadence are possible 
as well as progress; and it is probable that the sensuality 
and cruelty of the savage are greater than of the primitive 
man, for from the primitive man have developed the 
civilised as well as the savage races, and in the primitive 
man must have been the possibilities of both vice and 
virtue. Again, it is an assumption that humanity must 
have passed through an animal stage morally; man’s 
physical descent from lower animal forms may be 
admitted; and yet until more convincing evidence is 
offered we may hesitate about admitting a necessary 
moral affinity. Mentally, morally, and religiously man has 
realised possibilities so far removed from any of his animal 
kinsmen—and as creatures of the same God we need not 
shrink from calling them this—that it is incredible that his 
beginnings must have been exactly as the condition in 

M 


178 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS [cn. 


which without any progress they have continued unto this 
day. ‘The fixity of animal instinct and the progress of 
human intelligence present too wide a contrast to warrant 
the easy assumption that primitive man must have been 
but an animal. If he was, how did he not remain as all 
his kinsfolk have ? We need not commit ourselves to the 
absurdity of clothing primitive man with all the excellences 
to which humanity may aspire, as Christian theology once 
did; but we may at least suspend our judgment when we 
are asked to conceive him as a lustful and angry brute. 
Our inquiries cannot penetrate to the beginning.! 

(iii) The child is held to reproduce in his development 
the evolution of the race ; and by observation of the child | 
it is held by some we can tell how sin originates in the 
individual, and so infer its origin in the race. In following 
this method, however, two assumptions are made. First 
of all, it is assumed that the environment is not affecting 
the child’s moral development; the factor of social 
heredity is ignored. Secondly, in that development animal 
appetites and impulses are assumed to be normal; but 
just here, where body and mind must closely touch, we 
cannot altogether exclude the possibility of an intensifica- 
tion of these appetites by physical heredity from parents 
that have indulged these appetites. Mr. Tennant has 
given a full account of the child’s development as he 
conceives it; natural appetites of self-gratification and 
natural impulses of self-defence, which at the earliest 
stage are altogether non-moral, are developed before 
affection, conscience, and will. When the actual moral 
development begins these appetites and impulses are 
already in possession, and maintain themselves against 
the affection for the parents, and the authority of the 
parents, the form in which moral law first reaches the life 
of the child; and so when the will comes to be exercised, 
the moral personality has already acquired a certain bias. 
The moral race in each individual begins with this handi- 


i See Fairbairn’s The Philosophy of the Ohristian Religion, Book b 
chap. ii. 


vi. | THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF MAN 179 


cap; and thus the universality of sin can be explained.! 
That there is some truth in this account need not be 
questioned ; but we may doubt whether in itself it is an 
adequate explanation, and should not be supplemented by 
a recognition of both social and physical heredity as 
effective factors. The child does not in this respect 
completely recapitulate the race, and the origin of sin in 
the race remains unexplained. 

(iv) It is not incumbent on Christian thought to commit 
itself to any theory, although it must utter its caveat to 
any theory that treats sin as an inevitable factor of human 
development, and so lessens the sense of sinfulness, and 
challenges the condemnation by conscience of sin as that 
which ought not to be, for which man must hold himself 
responsible, and on which rests God’s judgment.? 

(3) Whatever be the origin of sin, the Christian faith is 
concerned with sin, not in the child nor in the savage, but 
in the developed moral personality, where there is a dis- 
tinct sense of right and wrong, and where there is 
liberty of choice, and responsibility for choice, conditioned 
but not destroyed by heredity, environment, character. 
As the Gospel is not an exacting law demanding man’s 
unaided obedience, but an offer of a saving grace, which 
is to be desired in penitence and accepted in faith, however 
limited the liberty may be, enough remains to impose the 

1 See The Origin and Propagation of Sin, pp. 96-115, and The Child and 
Religion, pp. 154-84. 

2 In a recent book, Hall’s Evolution and the Fall, the attempt is made to 
reconcile the scientific doctrine of evolution, as applied to man, and what 
the author regards as the Catholic doctrine of the Fall, by the assumption 
that ‘man’s primitive state was partly supernatural,’ and that for him ‘an 
original righteousness was made possible by grace.’ It was this super- 
natural gift which was lost at the Fall, and thus the race was left to a 
natural development, such as seience seems to require us to admit. While 
the writer himself does not feel it incumbent on him to try and prove the 
permanent validity of ‘Catholic doctrine,’ yet the development of the 
argument in this book has confirmed his conviction, as already stated, that 
man having developed a moral conscience and a religious consciousness, as 
no other animal has, having made so great progress both in goodness and 
godliness, need not—nay, even cannot—be regarded as, at the beginning of 
his history as man, but a little removed from the brute, as even the savage 
is not, but must be thought of as possessing, even at that first stage of 


development, the higher characteristics which afterwards so distinguish him 
from all other creatures, 


180 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS [ca 


responsibility for acceptance or rejection. Jesus was the 
friend, not only of social outcasts, but even of the morally 
depraved ; and He offered His grace to those whom moral 
respectability regarded as helplessly and hopelessly lost, 
for He at least was confident that the lost could be found, 
and the dead could be made alive.1 The Christian Gospel 
lays so great stress on man’s sinfulness, not to degrade 
him, or to drive him to despair, but to hold out to him the 
certainty of a deliverance that will exalt him to the 
dignity and the privilege of a child of God, not only for- 
given but called, and by grace enabled, to become perfect 
as the Heavenly Father is perfect. Opposing tendencies 
of thought that minimise man’s need are in their seeming 
kindness really cruel; for the disclosure of the depths to 
which man has fallen is also the assurance of the heights 
to which he may be raised. 


Ii 


(1) Having considered the Christian conception of 
human personality, and the Christian estimate of the sin 
that has marred and hindered its development, we may 
now look briefly at the course of the recovery of the soul 
by grace. ‘The first stage in that recovery is repentance. 
The Greek word in the New Testament, mefanoia, means 


change of mind; and what that change involves is sug- | 


gested by Jesus’ description of the prodigal ‘when he 
came to himself’ (Luke xv. 17). In sin there has been a 
false estimate of values; the appetites and passions with 
which the personality has identified its own self-realisation 
have not satisfied, and cannot satisfy ; the soul begins to 
be in want, and cannot find what it seeks. When the 
grace of God in Christ is presented, the personality discovers 
the reality, in which alone it can find fulfilment; its real 
self is the child of God, and as the possibility of becoming 
a child of God is apprehended and appreciated, there is 
the coming to the true self by the turning from the false. 


1 Luke xv. 32. 


EE 


Vil. ] THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF MAN 181 


That there might be this repentance, there must have 


_ been some faith in God’s grace; for the true self must be 
_ believed as possible before the false self is renounced. A 
_ self-knowledge apart from the hope of self-recovery, which 


only faith in God’s grace can sustain, would lead to remorse 
and not repentance. We may contrast the fate of Judas 
when he discovered that he had betrayed the innocent 


blood (Matt. xxvii. 3, 5), and the change in Peter when 


_ his denial was brought home to him in the look that Jesus 


gave him (Luke xxii. 61). The possibility of such self- 
recovery has already been discussed. Various influences 


_may lead the soul to come to itself. Browning makes the 


agonised look in Pompilia’s face the means of Caponsacchi’s 
return to his true manhood.! But no means has been 
found so generally effective as the presentation of the 


Cross, the divine sacrifice for human salvation. And 


whatever intellectual difficulties theologians may discover 
in the doctrine of the Atonement, the Cross has brought 
many to ‘the broken and the contrite heart,’ and to the 
forgiveness which is its healing. 

(ii) Faith must accompany, and, as we have seen, is the 


cause of repentance. Faith as it is presented in the New 
Testament is not merely or mainly intellectual belief. 


There must be some apprehension by the mind of the 


truth as it is in Jesus, and some appreciation by the heart 
of the worth of His salvation; but the decisive act of 
faith is self-committal to His grace in confidence that He 
can and that He will save. There must be surrender as 
well as trust, obedience as well as acceptance. Belief in 
a plan of salvation or a theory of atonement does not 
“save, but personal dependence on, confidence in, and 
submission to the living Saviour does. This faith may 


become, as it did in Paul’s case, so close a communion that 
he could think of his experience as a being crucified and 
being raised again with Christ; but even if such depths 
1 ‘That night and next day did the gaze endure, 
Burn to my brain, as sunbeam thro’ shut eyes, 


And not once changed the beautiful sad strange smile.’ 
The Ring and the Book, ii. 180, 


182 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [cu. 


are not fathomed or such heights scaled, faith is a con- 
stant receptivity for the abounding communicativeness of 
the love of God in Christ’s grace. Although a receptivity, 
that is a dependence on, confidence in, and submission to 
Christ, faith is not a passivity but an activity. To receive 
the truth and the grace of Jesus Christ requires a constant 
exercise of mind and heart and will; yet this exercise is 
not self-centred or self-circumscribed, but is fixed on and 
directed to the Saviour and the Lord. Faith is not only 
the beginning but the whole course of the Christian life, 
because the relation of the saved to the Saviour, and through 
Him of the child to the Father, is always receptivity for 
ever more abounding grace. 

(iii) The blessing with which the Christian life begins, 
and which must ever attend it, is the forgiveness of sin, 
not merely the cancelling of its penalty, but the recovery 
of the soul from distrust of and estrangement from God, 
because of disobedience, to a childlike trust in and love 
for God, the motive of obedience. Paul calls this the 
spirit of adoption, not as making the relation less real and 
more formal, but to emphasise the newness of the relation, 
the change from the former attitude to God. While, as the 
writer at least understands the Christian Gospel, it teaches 
a universal Fatherhood of God, a love impartial and 
beneficent to good and bad alike, yet it teaches also that 
the response of man is not universal ; for to be a child of 
God is not merely to be the object of God’s fatherly love, 
but to accept that love in confidence and obedience. 
Thus we have the seeming paradox, that while God is the 
Father of all men, not all men are God’s children; for 
this is not a physical relation, in which the terms would 
be strictly correlative, but a moral and spiritual relation 
in which universal grace on the one hand does not meet 
with universal faith on the other. Ritschl takes exception 
to our speaking of the love of man to God, as he thinks 
gratitude, reverence, and obedience, all summed up in 
faith, are more appropriate to the relation. In so far as 
he shrank from the sentimental intimacy which has some- 


vu. | THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF MAN 183 


times disfigured pietism, one may entirely sympathise with 
him; but if we give love its full meaning, as one self 
giving itself to and finding itself in another, and in this 
exercising the whole personality, we need not shrink from 
speaking of love to God. It is gratitude, reverence, and 
obedience, but it is also an intimacy of communion which 
none of these words adequately express.1 

(iv) When the love of God is fully received, and love 
for God freely exercised, there will be the peace of God, 
which passes all understanding (Phil. iv. 7), there will be 
more than conquest over temptation (Rom. viii. 37), 
there will be the perfecting of Christ’s strength in man’s 
weakness, there will be sufficiency of grace for every need 
(2 Cor. xii. 9), there will be victory over death with its 
terror (1 Cor. xv. 57), there will be certainty of eternal life. 
Outward circumstances, however adverse they seem, will 
be accepted as the working together of all things for good 
(Rom. viii. 28). The moral problem especially is solved. 
On the one hand, the constraining love of Christ will offer 
a new and potent motive. As the Christian says to him- 
self ‘'To me to live is Christ’ (1 Phil. i. 21), he identifies 
himself not with appetites and passions, pleasures and 
ambitions, but with the holy love of God. On the other 
hand, faith will claim and use a new and prevailing power, 
the Spirit of the Living God Himself withstanding and 
overcoming sin. 

(2) This Christian life is a reality of human experience, 
and not a speculation of human thought, or an illusion of 
human imagination. Christian theology has sometimes 
set it forth in so abstract terms, justification, sanctification, 
and glorification, that it has seemed unreal to those not 
familiar with the terminology. That it is a reality may 
be shown in three ways. 

(i) As we read the New Testament, we do find ourselves 
in a real world, witnessing a real life. The scholar with 
his absorption in the minutiz of text, language, literary 
and historical problems, may sometimes lose the whole in 


1 See The Ritschlian Theology, pp. 359-60. 


184 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS _ [ca. 


the parts, and the New Testament may in his hands 
become a cunningly constructed mosaic, which he will 
take to pieces, and the bits of which he will track to this 
and that source ; but if we read with moral and religious 
appreciation, as men with moral perils, who seek deliver- 
ance and religious needs, who seek satisfaction, the total 
impression will be different. Yet this book that seems so 
real to us is illusive from beginning to end, if the life in 
Christ is not forgiveness, peace, deliverance, and hope. 

(ii) Again, as we turn to the history of the Christian 
Church, great and many as have been the changes in 
creed and code, polity and ritual, yet the language of the 
saints is one. There have been periods in which the tide 
of Christian life has been at the ebb; there have been 
revivals in which pious aberrations have prevailed ; but 
throughout the Church has had its saints. The outward 
forms of their saintliness may have differed much, but the 
inner secret has been the same, ‘ the life hid with Christ 
in God.’ The fifty-first Psalm has been the confession of 
penitence throughout the generations; the fifty-third chapter 
of Isaiah has been the picture of divine grace unto sacrifice 
for salvation, on which the eyes of faith have rested with 
adoring gratitude, with a mingled joy and grief too deep 
for tears; the fourteenth chapter of the Gospel according 
to John has been read beside the bed of the dying, and has 
been lux in tenebris, the light of immortality in the valley 
of the shadow of death. Have all these saints walked in 
a vain show, and was the divine companionship in which 
they rejoiced in life and death a mocking jest ? 

(iii) To-day we can lift up our eyes unto the ends of the 
earth, and we find from men of all races, and colours, and 
tongues the same confession of the sufficiency of the 
Saviour, and the supremacy of the Lord. When we 
consider, on the one hand, the hindrances to the spread 
of the Gospel in racial prejudice, national exclusiveness, 
and religious bigotry, and, on the other, the indifference of 
the Christian Church as a whole to the world’s claim, we 
do not wonder that the results of the missionary enterprise 


VIL. | THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF MAN 185 


have not been greater, but are rather surprised at the 
testimony, that is swelling in volume, to the truth of the 
Christian view of man, its call to penitence, its assurance 
of forgiveness, its power of renewal, its inspiration to moral 
victory, and its security that death itself is dead, because 
Christ has revealed God and redeemed man. 

(3) Possibly to some readers the course of argument 
here pursued may appear strange and even inappropriate 
in a volume on Christian Apologetics ; and a few words of 
justification may in closing appear necessary. The writer 
has endeavoured to maintain his interest in, and keep him- 
self informed on, all the intellectual issues regarding the 
Christian faith that have been raised by modern scholar- 
ship and thought, and he has always tried ‘ to speak with 
the enemy in the gate.’ But, on the other hand, he has 
had a wide and varied experience of practical Christian 
service, and has kept himself in touch with the world-wide 
and, in its variety, bewildering service of the Christian 
churches to mankind. And often has he turned with 
relief and gratitude from these intellectual issues to the 
realities of Christian life to-day, and found there confirma- 
tion of his own Christian faith. He does not depreciate 
the importance of these intellectual issues ; he would not 
take refuge in any ‘ coward’s castle’ of pragmatism, or 
any other philosophy that sought escape from the peril 
and the labour of thought ; but he does venture to insist 
that many of our discussions about Christianity are 
academic, because out of touch with reality. How 
Christianity finds men, what it does with them, how it 
leaves them, are data not to be neglected, but to be 
explained in any estimate of the truth and the worth of 
the Christian faith. 


186 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS _ [cu. 


CHAPTER VIII 
THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 


I 


(1) CHRISTIANITY is a morality as well as a religion; it 
not only offers men the reality of forgiveness, but presents 
to them the ideal of holiness. As regards the relation of 
morality and religion in Christianity there are two things 
to be said. 

(i) Firstly, religion and morality are inseparable, for 
Christian faith is faith in God as holy love. As the object 
of worship is moral perfection, there can be no divorce 
between ritual and righteousness. In some religions 
mortality has been hindered rather than helped by the 
conception of deity and the modes of worship. The 
Hebrew prophets were in constant protest against the 
popular religion, in which sacrifice was a substitute for 
social righteousness. Even the Christian Gospel has been 
sometimes so distorted and perverted as to become an 
encouragement to moral indifference or laxity; Christ’s 
righteousness was so externally represented as a substitute 
for man’s righteousness, that forgiveness seemed a release 
from rather than an incentive to holiness. ‘Shall we 
continue in sin that grace may abound ?’ is a question 
that exposes a real peril. But when the Christian Gospel 
is properly understood there is not, and cannot be, any 
divorce between morality and religion. 

(ii) But, secondly, the Christian conception of morality 
is, in accordance with the religion itself, original. It is 
not an external law that is presented for obedience; it is 
an inward life that is guided in its self-expression. In 
the Sermon on the Mount Jesus made a series of contrasts 


| 
| 


At 


Vii. | THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 187 


between the old law and the new life; the old law forbade 
evil words and deeds, the new life excludes evil desires 
and dispositions. As has already been indicated, the 
love of God in Christ awakens the love of man, and this 
love is not only responsive towards God, but expansive 
towards man; it embraces not only the Heavenly Father, 
but also His earthly family. Christian morality has the 
same character as Christian piety, for it is the reception 
by, and the response of, man to the perfection of God. 
‘ Be ye perfect, as your Father which is in heaven is perfect,’ 
says the Master. ‘ Be ye imitators of God as dear children,’ 
echoes the servant. ‘Love is the fulfilling of the law,’ 
and ‘Love doeth no ill to his neighbour.’ But it may be 
said that there may be fondly foolish love that brings 
hurt, and fails to do good to the loved. But when we 
speak of Christian love, it is ever understood to be love of 
the same moral quality as God’s. ‘ Be ye holy, for | am 
holy.’ Whatever the Old Testament sense of holiness 
may have been, the New Testament meaning has the 
definite connotation of the teaching and example of Jesus. 
The continuity between the divine love received and the 
human love expressed is seen in one of the most distinctive 
features of Christian morality. Returning again to the 
contrasts in the Sermon on the Mount we find not only 
the greater inwardness of Christian morality, but even a 
reversal of Jewish morality. Love is to know no restriction 
by race or religion, and love is to return good for evil. 
The reciprocity of a national righteousness is to be replaced 
by the generosity of a universal beneficence. ‘ Love your 
enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that 
hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, 
and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your 
Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise 
on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just 
and on the unjust.’2 Again the Servant echoes the Master, 
and adds a still more constraining instance of the love 
of God in the grace of Christ Himself. ‘Be ye kind one 


1 Matthew v. 44-45. 


188 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS — [cn. 


to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as 
God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.’ . . . ‘Walk in love, 
as Christ also has loved us, and hath given Himself for 
us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling 
savour.’+ A sacrificial redemptive religion is the motive 
and the measure of a morality that at any cost forgives to 
the uttermost. This maximum demand does not exclude 
but presupposes the lesser claims of the common virtues 
in the ordinary human relations, already recognised by 
social standards. In the practical counsels of Paul’s 
letters these lowlier duties are urged from the loftiest 
motives ; but it is not in these that the distinctiveness of 
Christian morality lies. It is the universal beneficence— 
every kind of good to all manner of men—that imitates 
the Heavenly Father, whose care and bounty embraces 
all; it is the sacrificial forgiveness of all wrongs which 
reproduces the Saving Cross of Christ, that marks as 
unique the Christian morality, which is man’s expression 
to his fellow-men of the love of God that he receives in 
Jesus Christ. 

(2) In regard to this distinctive feature of the Christian 
morality two errors have to be avoided: on the one hand, 
it is not a quietism that refrains from human aspiration 
and endeavour in order that God alone may work; on 
the other hand, it is not a mysticism that, relying on the 
inner light of individual divine illumination, neglects to 
inquire what are the practical services of love which the 
existing conditions and necessities demand. On each of 
these points something must as briefly as possible be said. 

(i) It has been pointed out that Christian morality is 
not obedience to an outward law, but the expression of an 
inward life; but this must not be misunderstood to mean 
that Christian morality is spontaneous as many vital 
processes are. It has been insisted that faith is not 
passivity but activity, and as the reception of the divine 
grace is active so must its expression be. As the new life 
does not instantaneously take possession of the whole 


1 Ephesians iv. 32-v, 2. 


Vul. | THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 189 


personality, but is limited by the conditions of its develop- 
ment, there will be conscious effort in maintaining as in 
expressing the new life. It will not be in one resolve that 
grace will subdue nature. But even when the renewal of 
the personality by grace has far advanced, there must be 
constant conscious volition in the manifold services of 
love ; for God’s action by His Spirit is not the suppression 
but the stimulation of human energy. It is true that as 
repeated good acts become virtuous habits, as the new 
life more and more transforms the whole personality, 
there will be less obstruction to the expression of love in 
life ; but Christian morality can never become automatic, 
but to be personal must remain voluntary. The language 
of the New Testament of confidence, courage, and conquest 
declares the certainty of the sufficiency of God’s grace, 
but does not deny the necessity of the exercise of faith, 
and often very strenuous faith. 

(ii) As there must be the energy of will, so there must 
be the activity of mind. Wisdom must be eyes to love. 
A simple formula, like What would Jesus do? will not 
solve the problems of duty, for the answer to it would 
involve, on the one hand, a keen insight into the moral 
purpose and spirit of Jesus, and, on the other, a wide 
knowledge of the difference between the circumstances in 
which Jesus lived His earthly life, and those in which the 
follower of Jesus is to reproduce His example and teaching. 
While Jesus illustrated His general principles by special 
instances corresponding to the conditions around Him, 
these instances are not precedents for Christian behaviour 
in all times. Jesus was not a casuist in the good sense of 
the word even; He left no complete moral code, providing 
a rule of action in all conceivable circumstances. Unless 
His moral discernment had been accompanied by an 
absolute omniscience, had He made the attempt He 
would have bound His ideals in the fetters of local and 
temporal custom and need, as has Mohammed in the 
precision of his regulations about polygamy and slavery. 
His general principles, illustrated by but not identified 


190 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS [cH. 


with His special instances, are adaptable to the varied 
conditions and the varying circumstances of human life ; 
but how the adaptation is to be made in each case demands 
knowledge and wisdom. 

(3) This warning that Christian morality is not casuistry 
must be emphasised. The Christian ideal does not lay 
down rules of conduct to be literally obeyed ; it recognises 
the authority and requires the activity of the individual 
conscience ; and,-as Paul showed in his treatment of the 
relation of the ‘weak’ and the ‘strong’ brethren in 
Rome,' it enjoins the most reverent solicitude for another 
man’s conscience, so as not to lead it into error or doubt. 
All legalism, all attempt by any ecclesiastical authority to 
coerce the individual conscience, is contrary to the Christian 
estimate of the value and the dignity of every man as the 
child of God. But, on the other hand, the city of God 
is not intended to be a moral Babel, where in the confusion 
of moral judgments there can be no common moral activity. 
Kach believer will exercise his conscience as the member 
of a society, the collective wisdom of which he will so 
respect as to be guided by it wherever it is possible; and, 
as he will not wittingly injure the conscience of, so he 
will not wantonly impose his conscience on others. The 
Christian attitude in morals is removed as far from 
individual anarchism, the danger of the present, as 
from social despotism, the threat of the future. Recog- 
nising the rights of the individual conscience on the 
one hand, and the claims of the collective standards on 
the other, Christian ethics has as its task to apply the 
Christian ideal to the conditions and needs of each society 
or period; and Christian Apologetics must defend that 
ideal against objections, and commend it as best fitted to 
solve the moral problem. 

(4) The primary source of the distinctive Christian ideal 
is to be found in the teaching and example of Jesus. If in 
doctrine the apostles developed what was given in germ 
in the teaching of Jesus, in regard to Christian duty they 


1 Romans xiv, 


VIII. | THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 191 


did not add anything substantially new thereto, except in 
so far as the relations developed within the Christian 
society itself gave concrete application to the general 
principles of Jesus. In recent years the morality taught 
by lip and life by Jesus has been in various ways challenged; 
the defence of the Christian ideal must be directed especially 
to meet these objections. But the Apostolic Age offers 
an instance of the Christian ideal, not completely appre- 
hended and not perfectly applied, at work in the world. 
Paul’s organic view of the Christian Church, and of the 
consequent function of the members of it, is a very impor- 
tant contribution to Christian thought. But while the 
Christian ideal was original, it did not come into a world 
that had no moral customs, standards, and institutions. 
We are learning to-day to appreciate more highly the 
moral thought of Jew and Gentile alike. Here Christianity 
did not come to destroy but to fulfil Paul enjoins his 
converts in Philippi to give attention to, and endeavour 
to attain all moral excellences recognised in, the society to 
which they belonged,? and when a list of Christian virtues 
was made it included Plato’s four, wisdom, justice, temper- 
ance, courage, together with the Christian graces, fatth, 
hope, and love. 


i 


(1) In chapter four the recent representation of the 
teaching of Jesus as mainly, if not altogether, eschatological 
has already been dealt with. Christian morality is repre- 
sented as a penitential discipline or an interim ethic, and 
the suggestion is that it is not of permanent value and 
universal validity. If that contention were sound, it would 
be waste of time for us here and now to discuss the ideal of 
Jesus. But in opposition to this view several considera- 
tions can be urged. 

(i) The dominance of eschatology in the teaching of 
Jesus has been grossly exaggerated; and plausibility can 
be secured for this view only by most violent critical 


1 Matthew v. 17. 2 Philippians iv. 8. 


192 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS [cH. 


methods, by depriving Jesus Himself of all utterances 
that go beyond the narrow circle of eschatological ideas, 
and transferring all these to the Christian consciousness 
in its later developments. The objections to this course 
have already been sufficiently indicated. 

(ii) But even if this criticism were to establish its claims, 
the result would be that Jesus Himself would appear less 
original, and the community He founded less dependent 
on Him for its thought on God and goodness ; but we 
might still include in the Christian ideal the moral and 
religious truths in the Gospels which lie outside of the 
circle of eschatological ideas, to which on this theory the 
teaching of Jesus Himself was for the most part confined. 

(iii) It is an assumption, which must be closely 
scrutinised, that the morality enjoined under the influence 
of the hope of a speedy coming of God’s kingdom must 
be only a penitential discipline or interim ethic. The 
prophets of the Hebrew nation preached righteousness in 
view of the coming judgment of Jehovah; and the morality 
they preached was not only far in advance of the customs 
and standards of their own age, but even contained prin- 
ciples the full application of which modern society has 
not attempted. Even if Jesus stood in this prophetic 
succession, and the Kingdom of God was for Him an 
imminent manifestation of the divine power in human 
history, it depends altogether on what His conception of 
God was whether the morality He preached in preparation 
for that event has a merely temporary value. If He con- 
ceived God as Father, as holy love (and only a criticism 
that casts aside all restraints of sober judgment could 
deny this), then the morality He enjoined as fitting men 
for the Kingdom of God would be as valuable as His idea 
of God. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews describes 
faith as ‘ the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of 
things not seen ’ (xi. 1), and in the roll-call of the heroes of 
faith that follows he presents to us a succession of men 
who were ennobled and not lowered by their faith. It is 
a curious assumption that an ethic framed in view of the 


VII. | THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 193 


immediate presence of God in human history, and the 
imminent fulfilment of His purpose, should be inferior to 
an ethic that gave to God and His will a subordinate 
place. To think of holy love as in the heart of human life, 
and of the judgment of that holy love as at the very door, 
would, one might rather suppose, inspire a morality which 
was not for man’s moment, but for God’s eternity. As 
Jesus welcomed the coming of the Kingdom, His preaching 
was not ‘panic’ preaching; as for Him the Kingdom 
was the Kingdom of the perfect Heavenly Father, there 
was nothing temporary or local in the righteousness of the 
Kingdom. We can, therefore, judge the teaching of Jesus 
on its merits, without even the supposition that its value 
or validity is affected by His expectation of a rapid fulfil- 
ment of God’s will regarding mankind and not a long 
course of human progress. For even we who have got so 
accustomed to the idea of evolution that we cannot think 
of God as fulfilling Himself in any other way cannot live 
more worthily than as ever in God’s immediate presence, 
and under the imminent judgment of His holy love. 

(2) But apart from the theory of the predominance of 
eschatology in the teaching of Jesus, exception has been 
taken to the Christian ideal on the ground that it pollutes 
morality by introducing religious sanctions, and makes 
it less effective in this world by its other-worldliness. 

(i) Of course, if there is no God, and so religion is an 
illusion ; and if there is no immortality, and so the hope 
of it is deceptive, it is desirable that morality should be 
kept apart both from the belief in God and the hope of 
immortality as far as possible; but if, on the contrary, 
there are good reasons for holding the belief in God, and 
good grounds on which the hope of immortality may rest, 
the initial assumption that morality should have no 
relation to the experienced or the expected reality is 
unjustified. It is surely desirable that morality should 
have as wide a horizon, and as far a prospect as is possible. 
If the moral order is not confined to human society, the 
resultant of its customs, institutions, and standards, but 

N 


194 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS — [cn. 


has an eternal reality in God, and a progressive mani- 
festation in human history, morality cannot be severed 
from religion, for religion gives it a wider meaning and a 
higher worth. If man’s moral development is not con- 
fined to this earthly life, but is continued and completed 
in a life beyond, it can attempt, because it may expect, 

greater things. 

(ii) There is a conception of the relation of the belief in 
God and the hope of immortality that is not unknown 
within the Christian Church to which very serious exception 
may be taken. If by religious sanctions be meant the 
hope of heaven or the fear of hell as the enforcements of 
morality, then religion would pollute morality, for it would 
put in the place of the proper moral motive a selfish impulse. 
The man who is honest because honesty is the best policy 
is not morally honest at all, and so the man who is moral 
that he may escape misery, and secure happiness hereafter, 
isnot moral. But this is not the Christian motive. When 
Jesus commanded the disciples to love their enemies, the 
inducement He offered was ‘ that ye may be the children 
of your Father which is in heaven’ (Matt. v. 45). To have 
filial communion with God, to have a filial resemblance to 
God, this is not a motive that makes morality impure or 
interested, but relates man’s temporal endeavour after 
perfection to the eternal reality of perfection in God. So 
again, when Paul confesses that it is the love of Christ 
which constraineth us, it is not a non-moral motive of a 
sentimental affection to which he appeals, but a personal 
devotion and submission to a perfect personality who 
reproduces His judgment on sin and His devotion to 
holiness in us. 

(iii) The Christian imagination has sometimes made of 
heaven another world, only brighter, better, and more 
blessed than this world, and has longed for its ease, 
comfort, and joy; and it is unfortunate that so many 
hymns about heaven so exclusively give prominence to this 
‘ other-worldliness.’ But what is the Christian hope 
itself? ‘ Now we see through a glass, darkly ; but then 


VIL. | THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 195 


face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know 
even as also [am known.’ And the clearer version brings 
closer resemblance. ‘ Beloved, now are we the sons of 
God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we 
know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him: 
for we shall see him as heis.’!_ Religion as filial communion 
with, and resemblance to God as holy love, and the hope 
of immortality as the hope of the clearer vision of and the 
closer resemblance to Jesus Christ, the perfect Son of God, 
do not pollute morality, but put it in its proper divine 
and eternal context. 

(3) The conflict between Geology and Genesis, between 
the Darwinian theory of evolution and the Christian | 
doctrine of the Fall, does not trouble us any longer; but 
it is impossible to ignore the influence on moral ideas of 
the Darwinian theory, which has provoked one of the most 
formidable attacks on the Christian ideal. The phrases 
‘struggle for existence’ and ‘survival of the fittest’ have 
been taken out of their proper physical context, and been 
intruded into the moral realm. Jingoism and Imperialism 
of the blatant sort are Darwinianism in morals and in 
politics. For such an application of the theory neither 
Darwin nor other exponents of it are to be held responsible. 
Darwin expressly repudiated the application of the prin- 
ciple of ‘the struggle for existence’ to human society ; 
Huxley asserted a different principle in the moral order 
and the cosmic process; and Wallace finds the contrast 
so great that he will not explain man’s mental and moral 
endowments as he does his physical descent. It was 
Nietzsche who transformed Darwinianism into a rule of 
action for man; and where his name is not even known, 
his justification of the self-assertion of human individuality 
has been readily welcomed. For Nietzsche the Christian 
morality is servile: it offers the rules for the conduct of 
slaves.?_ It is curious to compare with this view the recent 


11 Cor. xiii. 12; 1 John iii. 2. 
2 See for a brief statement of his views Ludovici’s Nietzsche: His Life and 
Work. 


196 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS [CH. 


theory that Christianity originated in a slave revolt. 
Would a * servile’ morality originate in, or give inspiration 
to, a revolt of slaves? What we are now concerned with 
is the question, Can the teaching of Jesus about the love 
that suffers and forgives wrong, that offers no resistance, 
and cherishes no revenge, be properly described as ‘ ser- 
vile,’ and does it give to morality a wrong direction away 
from the more desirable self-assertion? In answering 
this question we must take into account the following 
considerations : 

(i) Self-assertion is the natural impulse of man, which 
he derives from his animal ancestry. It needs no encour- 
agement ; but, as all morality and society shows, demands 
constant restraint if man is to live in peaceful associations 
with his fellows. In pagan morals, while restraints were 
imposed, there was admiration for this quality. The wise 
man is a man who is self-sufficient in his judgments. The 
temperate man restrains his appetites, not from regard 
to others, but that he may get all the pleasure out of them 
he can without any of the resultant pain of undue self- 
indulgence. The courageous man asserts himself in face 
of peril or pain. The high appreciation of justice as the 
social bond does modify this ideal. Christian morality 
was first proclaimed in a world which needed not that any 
encouragement should be given to self-assertion, but 
rather required that all emphasis should be put on its 
restraint. The active virtues could be taken for granted ; 
what needed assertion were the passive virtues, despised 
and neglected. 

(il) Jesus addressed His disciples in the certain 
expectation that they would be persecuted for His name’s 
sake. Many of the counsels in the Gospels are concerned 
with the proper behaviour in persecution. Jesus does not 
advise patient submission because resistance was impos- 
sible, that is, from a cowardly motive; but because He 
believes that resistance can excite only more violent 
enmity, and submission alone—wrong borne not only with- 
out complaint, but even joyously—can at last change hate 


VIII. | THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 197 


into pity, oppression into tolerance, and that change is to 
be desired not so much for the relief of the persecuted, 
as for the benefit of the persecutor. It is to win men from 
sin to God that wrong is to be endured and not avenged. 
The children of the God who is good even to the evil 
cannot be anything but good, and they are encouraged in 
this goodness by the hope that even the evil may be won 
for goodness. It is an entire distortion of Jesus’ teaching 
to suggest even that there is any appeal to cowardice. 
Jesus spake in heavenly wisdom, as enjoining men to 
follow the ways of the Heavenly Father, and yet He has 
been justified by earthly prudence. It was by its martyr- 
doms that the Christian Church at last conquered the 
Roman Empire. Even fully recognising the lower motives 
which entered into Constantine’s decision, who can doubt 
that the position the Church held, which made it even 
possible for a Roman emperor to think of confessing him- 
self a Christian, had been won not by force of arms, but, 
first of all, and most of all, by its witness unto death ? 
_Again and again in human history has the patience of the 
saints won the victory for their faith. 

(ili) It is absurd to suggest that such submission as is 
recorded in the stories of the martyrs is an instance of 
cowardice and not courage, servility and not heroism. 
It takes less courage to hit back than to suffer the blow ; 
it is more heroic to endure patiently than to resist violently. 
Anger is a natural passion, to yield to which requires no 
moral strength. The restraint of anger involves a self- 
control which shows moral power. The demand that 
Jesus made was not on moral weakness, but on moral 
strength; and it is only a false conception of courage 
and strength, which exalts natural impulse above moral 
resolve, that can ever lead us to think otherwise. 

(iv) The teaching about non-resistance and the return 
of good for evil is an application of the supreme Christian 
principle of love; and it must be always understood in 
accordance with and not contradiction of that principle. 
When another’s good requires that his fault should be 


198 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS _ [cu. 


rebuked, or that his wrong should be punished, then love 
enjoins that the word of rebuke be spoken, and the deed 
that punishes should be done; but it must ever be as 
an obligation of love to another, and not as a relief to 
personal feeling, that rebuke should be given or punish- 
ment inflicted. Jesus’ teaching does not exclude moral 
discipline or civil government, as the next paragraph will 
show. 

(v) With these explanations we can face the question : 
Is it for the good of the individual and of the other 
individuals who compose the same society that his life 
should be ordered by the principle of self-assertion, or 
by the Christian principle of love to others, of self-restraint 
for the good of others? In following the first course a 
common good can never be attained ; the ‘strong’ man in 
his self-assertion must make the ‘ weak’ his instruments 
and victims; as his ‘morality’ succeeds, others are 
debarred from being ‘ moral.’ By mutual love a common 
good is alone made possible; a morality embracing all 
can result. | 

(4) At the opposite extreme from Nietzsche’s view is the 
interpretation of the Christian ideal given by Tolstoy. 
Love as non-resistance of wrong in his judgment excludes 
and condemns punishment, war, even government. In his 
view Christianity is anarchic. In estimating the value or 
the validity of this view there are again several considera- 
tions that must be urged. 

(i) Seeing how far Christendom, with its wasteful 
expenditure on armaments, with, in many lands at least, 
its cruel oppression of subjects by rulers, falls short of the 
Christian ideal of love, one can understand and sympathise 
with Tolstoy’s attitude. Government, even nominally 
Christian, as encouraging militarism and exercising tyranny, 
may appear as itself one of the evils of which Christianity 
is to rid us. But, on the other hand, we must not ignore 
what government does for the good of human society. 
There is the restraint of evil, national and individual. 
Even armaments are a condition of the preservation of 


VIII. | THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 199 


peace. If a nation given to self-assertion were confronted 
only with nations that had made no provision for self- 
defence, it would quickly impose its yoke upon them. 
Even the lover of peace and the enemy of militarism may 
confess that Europe as an ‘armed camp’ is preferable to 
a Europe under the heel of one oppressor. So, too, a 
nation without police, judges and prisons would soon 
become not the refuge, but the domain of criminals. Of 
course, if Christendom were really, nationally and 
individually, Christian, if the inward restraint and con- 
straint of love were universal, then the protection of law 
with force as its servant would not be necessary; but it 
is only to prejudice men against Christian morality to 
assert that it demands here and now what the existing 
conditions make absolutely impracticable. But does the 
Christian ideal as Jesus taught it, as the Apostolic Age 
understood it, demand anything as impracticable as the 
abolition of all government ? 

(ii) Jesus in His teaching carefully abstained from 
any political programme, and He addressed Himself to a 
community that had no expectation of being entrusted 
with the carrying out of a political programme. The 
popular Jewish expectation was of a political Deliverer 
and Ruler, and before Jesus even sought from His disciples 
the confession of Messiahship He was careful to correct 
these views, and to substitute a hope of moral and religious 
deliverance in His person and work. He would not divide 
an inheritance; He admitted the right of the priest to 
pronounce the leper clean; He would not encourage any 
withholding of taxes from Cesar; He even accepted the 
scribes as interpreters of the law; He bade Peter pay the 
temple dues; only on marriage and the family did He 
pronounce any decisive judgment.! If He did not give 
any directions as to the proper methods of government, 
He recognised the existing authorities in Church and State ; 
and it is only by an inference from His teaching about 


: Ate xii, 13-15; v. 14; Matt. xxii. 15-22; xvii. 27; xix. 3-9; Mark vii. 
-13. 


200 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS _ [cu. 


non-resistance that He can be regarded as condemning 
government as such. In the Apostolic Church there was 
a recognition of the authority of the Roman Empire, 
and there is no hint in Paul’s letters that the government 
appeared as an illegitimate usurpation. Not a word 
favouring Anarchism can be found in the New Testament. 

(iii) In addressing to His disciples His counsels about 
non-resistance He had in view a community, persecuted by 
the government, and not a community which could have 
much influence on the government. The primitive Christians 
were subjects of the Roman Empire with no voice or share 
in the government, and not citizens in the modern sense, 
participating by their vote in the government. We must 
not apply without qualification to citizens governing 
counsels addressed to subjects governed. Submission to 
persecution does not involve, as its counterpart, abstinence 
from any participation in government in restraint of 
wrong or in protection of virtue. The counsel to submit 
to the oppression of a persecuting government does not 
establish the universal principle that government may 
not exercise force to suppress lawlessness. The last thing 
Jesus was thinking about was what it was legitimate or 
illegitimate for a government todo. We may condemn the 
persecution of saints as a wrong without maintaining the 
toleration of criminals as a duty. What Jesus said about 
the behaviour of His disciples when persecuted is quite 
irrelevant to the problems of modern government. 

(iv) From the general principle, of which these counsels 
were a particular application, we may, however, learn that 
the government which is vindictive in spirit and purpose, 
and even in punishment, and does not seek as well as the 
common good even the good of those punished, is non- 
Christian. It is only in the interests of the common good 
that war can be waged, or law enforced with the moral 
sanction of Christianity. 

(5) The view of Tolstoy is an eccentricity of genius 
that is not likely to exercise any widespread influence. 
A more directly practical issue is raised by the question 


vut. ] THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 201 


whether the Christian ideal is individualist or socialist. 
This is the most urgent problem of the hour, and each side 
in the present controversy claims Jesus for itself. It is 
probable that teaching such as His cannot be described 
simply in the catchwords of this or any other hour: but 
we cannot dismiss the issue with so general a consideration, 
but must attempt a fuller discussion. 

(i) What has already been said in other connections 
must be recalled here ; Jesus came as a moral and religious 
Teacher, to say nothing here about His unique function as 
Saviour and Lord, and a political or even social programme 
did not even come into His view. On marriage and the 
family He did pronounce Himself very definitely in opposi- 
tion to the lax views of the scribes on divorce and the 
duty of children to parents,! but in each case the interest 
was predominantly moral. In fact, it seems to be alto- 
gether a mistake to suppose that in reference to divorce, He 
was formulating the principle of the divorce laws of any 
state. He was denouncing as adultery the practice of 
getting a divorce from one wife in order to marry another, 
and the laxity of the interpreters of the law in sanctioning 
this practice ; and anything like legislation for any nation 
was not even in His thoughts. He lays down no rules and 
offers no counsels for any other social institutions. His 
aim was to hold aloof from any movement of political or 
social change, such as the popular expectations assigned 
to the Messiah. It cannot be said that Jesus was a social 
reformer in the modern sense, of either desiring or advo- 
cating any precise changes in the social arrangements of 
Judaism. 

(ii) In His teaching Jesus laid great stress on the 
individual, and the worth of each soul to God. He did 
not think in classes or masses, but in ones. Each man, 
whether socially outcast, morally depraved, or religiously 
indifferent, is of so great value to God that God sorrows 
in his loss and rejoices in his recovery ; he has the dignity 


1 For a discussion of many of the questions raised in this chapter the 
writer may refer to his book My Brother's Keeper. 


202 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [on, 


of the child of God, called to imitate the perfection of 
his Father ; the reverence for humanity in each man which 
Kant enjoined finds clear expression in the teaching of 
Jesus. Any social action that treats individual men as 
instruments, and not as persons, is condemned from the 
Christian standpoint. Especially in the moral conscience 
and religious consciousness is the individual man to be 
respected. This sacred individuality must set the bounds 
to social authority in morals as in religion; and a society 
that usurped the function of the moral conscience as 
regards duty, or the religious consciousness as regards 
belief in God would stand in opposition to this Christian 
individualism. 

(iii) But as this individual value is asserted of all men 
alike, individualism in the sense of selfishness is absolutely 
excluded. Every man must value his neighbour as he 
values himself as the child of God, and his rights from 
others are to be measured by the claims of others upon 
him. ‘ Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’ ‘ What- 
ever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do 
ye also unto them,’ ! sets self and others on an equality. 
As the principle of Christian morality is love, the Christian 
individuality cz be realised only in service to, and sacrifice 
for society. The term Socialism is so identified in current 
usage with a particular theory of the ownership of capital 
that it can only mislead to represent Christianity as 
socialistic as well as individualistic. But this can be said 
confidently that the Christian personality must recognise 
social claim no less than individual right; and realises 
itself not in selfishness, but in love, not in keeping life, 
but in losing it, and so finding it. The Christian ideal is 
above the antithesis of individualism and socialism; for 
it does not recognise any necessary opposition of self and 
others, but a common life in dependence on, and submission 
to the common Fatherhood of God. 

(iv) It is an error to suppose, as is being done to-day, 
that the Christian ideal is directly for or against economic 


1 Matt. xxii. 39; vii. 12. 


VIII. ] THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 203 


Socialism. On the one hand, it may be urged that 
Christianity so fully admits the rights of others, that the 
surrender of private property in favour of collective owner- 
ship would not go beyond its demand. On the other, it 
may be held that as the service of others it enjoins is 
voluntary service, solely from the constraint of love, and 
as in that service the generous use of private property is 
not an unimportant factor, the possession of such property, 
to be so used, is one condition of the full exercise of the 
Christian personality. It is certain that the Christian 
ideal condemns any economic arrangement which is 
unjust, hurtful, or even unloving in disregarding the needs 
of others. 

(6) But the mention of private property at once raises 
another question: Is not the Christian ideal ascetic? Did 
not Jesus prefer poverty to riches? Did He not enjoin 
mendicancy on His disciples on their first mission ? Was 
He not utterly indifferent to industry and commerce, to 
art and culture generally ? St. Francis of Assisi believed 
the life of poverty and beggary to be the necessary 
imitation of Jesus; and the evangelical counsels of the 
monastic life were held to mark a higher stage of Christian 
living than the evangelical commands of the secular 
business. This question cannot be answered as easily as 
modern Protestantism in practice, if not also in theory, 
assumes. 

(i) Jesus did undoubtedly regard wealth as a greater 
peril to the soul than poverty.! Covetousness was to Him 
the soul’s suicide. The inward treasures alone had value 
for Him. The gain of the whole world could not com- 
pensate for the loss of the soul. As His own miracles, and 
His commendation of the acts for relief of need and suffer- 
ing show, He did not desire want to be unremoved, pain 
unassuaged, or grief uncomforted. One cannot escape the 
conclusion, however, that, contrary to dominant opinion 
to-day, he did not regard personality as so entirely de- 
pendent on environment as many advocates of social 


1 See Luke vi. 20, 21; xvi. 19-31. 


204 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [ca. 


reform make it out to be; but believed that by faith in 
God the soul could triumph over the most adverse 
circumstances. What the world regards as the most 
favourable conditions appeared to Him as the most 
perilous, as encouraging a self-sufficiency and self-satis- 
faction antagonistic to a humble dependence on God. 
The contrast between this and the modern attitude within 
Christendom itself is only too apparent. 

(ii) Jesus’ instructions to His disciples about their 
journey (Matt. x. 9-11) were counsels adapted to the local 
and temporary conditions, and are to be given a permanent 
and universal application just as little as the voluntary 
communism of the primitive community in Jerusalem, 
which met an immediate necessity, but cannot be regarded 
as offering the model for all times and places of a Christian 
society (Acts ii. 44, 45). This is so obvious that it seems 
hardly necessary to strengthen the argument by insisting, 
as has been done, that if all Christians took to begging, 
there would soon be no one to bestow alms. In His 
parables Jesus assumes the practice of various callings 
and the possession of private property without any censure 
or even question ; and it is certain that He never intended 
His followers to be all beggars. 

(iii) It is true that Jesus has nothing to say about the 
manifold interests and pursuits which constitute our 
modern culture and civilisation. He lived, taught and 
worked amid surroundings in which life was simple, the 
bodily needs were few and easily met, and in which luxury 
was unknown. On literature, art, science, philosophy He 
had no opinions and offered no judgment. But He knew 
God as Father, and He knew man as the child of God who 
might be lost, but could be found; He concentrated His 
interest and His effort on what is most important for man 
——His dependence on God, and His vocation to goodness ; 
and He made it possible for man to trust in God fully, and 
fulfil his calling freely. He answered the highest question 
the mind can ask, and met the deepest need the heart can 
feel, and yielded the greatest help the soul can crave. The 


VIII. } THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 205 


interests and the pursuits He did not even know can all 
be purified and elevated by the holy sonship towards God 
He brought to man. 

(iv) There is, however, a self-indulgence in modern 
culture and civilisation which the Christian ideal condemns. 
Jesus was not an ascetic in the narrow sense of the word 
(Matt. xi. 19); He did not enjoin abstinences or pains of 
the flesh for their own sake, as having any merit before 
God or value for man; but He did enjoin self-denial, the 
sacrifice of the most prized possessions or the most 
cherished affections wherever the Kingdom of God, that 
is, fidelity to truth, goodness, or Himself, might require it 
(Matt. xvi. 24-26). The ease, comfort and luxury which 
many Christians allow themselves while all around there is 
so much misery unrelieved and want unremoved, one can 
feel sure would have grieved His heart, might even have 
stirred Him to righteous indignation. The only person 
whom He expressly consigned to the eternal torments was 
the rich man who, faring sumptuously and arrayed gor- 
geously, left the beggar at his own gates untended save 
by the dogs of the street (Luke xvi. 19-26). The Lazarus 
at the gate of the modern society, calling itself Christian, 
is a proof of how far short it falls of not only realising, but 
even recognising the Christian ideal. It is a problem the 
difficulty of which the writer himself feels so keenly that 
he would not write about it harshly or hastily ; yet there 
is a glaring contradiction between the modern Christian 
estimate of culture and civilisation and the Christian ideal. 
We are forced to face the question, Is our modern progress, 
with its enormous increase of all our material resources, a 
mistake and a danger? It is probable that there has been 
an advance in material well-being in the community 
generally ; but at the one end of the social scale there are 
a luxury and ostentation which are enslaving the soul to 
the material, and at the other end there are a misery and 
squalor which are brutalising men and women, and even 
children. However contrary to all the tendencies of the 
age, would not a Christian asceticism be desirable? If 


206 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS _ {cx. 


Christian men followed more closely in the footsteps of 
Jesus who did not please Himself, but denied Himself ; 
and regulated their expenditure not for self-indulgence, 
but for the greatest benefit to the community, not by 
pauperising their poorer neighbours, but by affording the 
conditions for industry and independence, the most 
threatening aspect of our modern society would cease to 
trouble us. Our modern culture and civilisation have 
not been so successful morally or socially as to be justified 
in challenging the Christian ideal, which places the 
Kingdom of God first, and leaves all other things to the 
Father’s care (Matt. vi. 33). 


iit 


(1) Having met the objections which are being to-day 
urged against the Christian ideal, especially as presented 
in the teaching of Jesus, we may now in concluding this 
discussion consider how that ideal can be realised. It is 
an ideal, and not a code or a polity. It is a supreme 
principle, in which morality and religion are conjoined, 
in which the interests of self and others are harmonised, 
for the one Christian commandment, of which all Christian 
living is but the fulfilment, is absolute love to God, and 
equal love to self and to others (Matt. xxii. 34-40). The 
content to be given to this love, the special applications to 
be made of this general principle, depend on the teaching 
and example of Jesus, the doctrine and practice of the 
Christian community, the moral standards and institutions 
of the human society around, and the enlightenment and 
quickening of the individual Christian conscience by the 
ever-present and ever-active Spirit of God. Gautama the 
Buddha founded a monastic community, and gave it a 
set of rules for the ordering of its life. Mohammed founded 
a nation with a common faith, and from time to time 
legislated for its common life; and the Koran remains 
the supreme law book of Islam. But Jesus did not give 
to His community either a code or a polity. If He had 


vill.) THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 207 


done so, it would have been fettered by local custom and 
temporary expedient, as are the two religions just mentioned 
which, claiming to be universal in character, are also 
missionary in effort, and are the most formidable rivals 
Christianity has to meet. The legalism and formalism of 
Pharisaic Judaism, which Jesus so unreservedly denounced, 
would be introduced into His religion, were we to take all 
His counsels as rules and all His acts as precedents. 
The form of His teaching was necessarily often determined 
by temporary and local conditions, and we must detach 
the kernel of permanent and universal principle from this 
husk. So also as regards the doctrine and practice of the 
Apostolic Church, it is not the pattern to which every 
Christian society must conform, but it embodies a spirit 
of holy fellowship in which every society claiming to be 
Christian must participate. As there is moral progress in 
human society, the Christian Church will ever seek to 
confirm what seems morally best in existing standards 
and institutions, while at the same time endeavouring to 
realise the Christian ideal in and through these. If true 
to that ideal, it will enforce not the minimum, but the 
maximum moral obligation already recognised. Casuistry 
is utterly foreign to Christianity, because it, on the one 
hand, honours the individual conscience, and, on the other, 
recognises and expects the guidance and guardianship of 
the Christian community by the Spirit of God. The 
refusal to be bound by rules and precedents does not make 
the Christian ideal too vague to be practical ; although it 
necessitates, on the one hand, study of economic, social, 
and political conditions which affect moral obligations, 
and, on the other, the moral insight which is dependent on 
a pure and worthy motive, to discern what is the applica- 
tion necessary of the general principle. 

(2) It must be insisted that the Christian ideal is for the 
Christian community primarily, and only secondarily for 
human society generally. It is not a law prescribed to all, 
but a life described of some. The attempt to translate 
the Christian ideal into legislation for a society not yet 


208 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS _ [cn. 


thoroughly Christian would be bound to end in failure ; 
and what the Christian has to be on his guard against is 
the impatience that would impose the yoke of Christ on 
those who have not yet come to Him. 

(i) The filial perfection of holy love to all that Jesus 
requires can be the aim only of those who have been 
through Him brought into the filial relation to God. The 
forgiven learn how to forgive, and the beloved of God 
how to show the godlike love to men. The realisation of 
the Christian ideal depends then on the reality of the 
Christian religion in an individual or a society. 

(ii) Accordingly, instead of the Church trying to impose 
the Christian ideal by legislation on a society, the majority 
of which is not yet Christian, it should seek to win men 
for Christ, so that the Christian ideal will not present 
itself to them as a law to be obeyed, but as the life they 
desire to attain. If in the past the Christian Church had 
been less eager to legislate, and more anxious to convert, 
more concerned about renewing the character, and less 
about ruling the conduct of men, the Christian ideal might 
have been nearer realisation than it is. 

(iii) For this consideration must be pressed, that from 
the Christian standpoint the inward constraint must 
take the place of the outward restraint, and legislation 
is of far less value than conversion. It may be questioned 
whether the demand urged in the Christian name for more 
and more legal enforcement of morality is as genuinely 
Christian in spirit as it professes to be. It is primarily by 
new men and not new laws that the Christian ideal will be 
realised. 

(iv) The Christian community, however, must in its 
own fellowship present to the world a realisation of the 
Christian ideal. But can it not be said, with too great a 
measure of truth, that the churches through their public 
assemblies endeavour to require that the State should be 
more Christian than they are in their own life and work ? 
The churches to-day are more in danger of becoming the 
salt that has lost its savour than of failing in the endeavour 


vu] THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 209 


to be the leaven in the lump of human society. Yet the 
Christian character of society generally can be maintained 
only as the Christian churches remain genuinely and 
intensely Christian. 

(v) The common conscience must be so educated by the 
presentation and illustration of the Christian ideal in the 
Christian churches, that the social order will progressively 
realise that Christian ideal, but the social order must follow 
the common conscience. The attempt to legislate much 
in advance of public opinion is sure to result in reaction ; 
a little in advance it may be, for legislation is educative ; 
and the common conscience recognises the legal enact- 
ment as moral obligation, if too sudden and severe a 
demand is not made upon it. 

(vi) In the realisation of the Christian ideal we must 
recognise that evolution is God’s method in morals as in 
nature; it is only by a gradual progress that man’s co- 
operation with God’s advancing purpose can be secured. 
To ask God to bring His Kingdom speedily by His power 
is to deny the moral and religious character of that 
Kingdom. God must train before He can use His human 
agents, and this gradual progress is the most effective 
education. | 

(vii) Recognising this, however, we must still urge that 
the progress is slower than it need be, or than God wills 
it to be. For Jesus all things were possible to faith, 
because God can do all things. If Christians exercised a 
more constant and confident faith in God, there would be 
a heroic quality in Christian living which would make the 
realisation of the Christian ideal more speedy. The fault 
lies not in the ideal, nor in the lack of grace which faith may 
claim for its realisation, but in the fact that Christ’s demand 
for faith is not being met. 

(viii) These considerations are not irrelevant to a work 
on Christian Apologetics, as the Christian ideal is most 
seriously challenged by those who point to its slow realisa- 
tion as an evidence of its ineffectiveness; but if we 
recognise on’ the one hand that the larger and loftier the 

, O 


210 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [cu, 


ideal, the more time must we allow for man’s moral educa- 
tion to apprehend, appreciate, and apply it, and, on the 
other, that here as in all human history man fails to fulfil 
his obligation and to use his opportunity, the objection 
will be met. Faith is straitened even while grace 
abounds. 


1x.] THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 211 


CHAPTER IX 
THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 


i) 


(1) It has already been necessary to mention several 
times the Christian eschatology, or doctrine of the last 
things, the content of the Christian hope. It is held by 
some scholars that the teaching of Jesus was mainly 
eschatological, that He was influenced not only by the 
prophetic literature of the Old Testament, but also by 
the Apocalyptic writings of contemporary Judaism. Even 
if Jesus did expect a very speedy coming of the Kingdom 
of God in His own return in power and glory, it was not 
the sole, or main, content of His revelation ; and we have 
already considered the other moral and religious truths 
it contained. In the Apostolic Age there was a very 
intense expectation of the Second Advent of the Lord 
even within the first Christian generation, for Paul in his 
Epistles to the Thessalonians has, on the one hand, to offer 
his comfort to bereaved believers, who thought that their 
friends who had died would thereby lose the good of the 
Second Advent, and, on the other, to rebuke the disorders 
arising out of these too excited hopes.!_ Paul’s own mind 
seems to have wavered between the expectation of surviv- 
ing to the Coming of Christ, and his conviction at times 
of bodily weakness and suffering that it would be by 
death, as absent from the body, that he would be present 
with the Lord. Towards the end of his life he seems even 
to have desired death as release from present distress.? 
The eschatological programme of primitive Christianity 


11 Thess. iv. 13-18 ; 2 Thess. iii. 10-12, 
® Compare 1 Cor. xv. 51, 52; 2 Cor. v. 1-10; Phil. i, 21-24, 


212 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [cu, 


was influenced not only by Hebrew prophecy, but also by 
Jewish apocalyptic ; but was distinguished from both by 
the position assigned by Christian faith to the Lord Jesus 
Christ. At the Second Advent of Christ from heaven 
the dead would be raised, the final judgment would take 
place, and the righteous would pass into eternal blessed- 
ness, and the wicked would suffer the eternal death. 'The 
belief in a resurrection of the saints prior to the general 
resurrection, and a reign of Christ with them for a thousand 
years (Rev. xx. 1-3) on earth before the final revolt and 
destruction of the powers of evil is a curious eschatological 
speculation that seems not to have had any wide currency. 

(2) While Christian thought generally has not busied 
itself with eschatology, these apocalyptic views have had 
an unwholesome fascination for some minds; and the 
commentaries on Daniel and the Revelation are for the 
most part a monument of human folly. But reasons must 
be shown why in the Christian hope, which we can defend 
and commend, we cannot include this eschatological 
programme taken literally. 

(i) It cannot be regarded as the spontaneous and 
inevitable expression of the Christian faith itself, but as, 
for the most part, a foreign element intruded into the 
web of distinctively Christian ideas. Christ’s ultimate 
triumph in the world, and the believer’s eternal life with 
Him, are beliefs which spring out of the Christian faith 
itself; but the form in which these convictions are 
expressed is borrowed from Jewish apocalyptic as well as 
Hebrew prophecy. We must here apply the methods of 
interpretation that are proper to these kinds of literature. 
The failure to distinguish the method of apocalyptic from 
that of prophecy has involved Christian thought in endless 
mazes of error. Neither can be, or must be taken literally, 
for both indulge freely in figurative language ; apocalyptic 
uses arbitrary symbols even more freely than prophecy 
ever did. Through failure to use the proper methods of 
exegesis Christian theology has dogmatised poetry; 
spiritual reality has been apprehended as physical fact. 


Ix. ] THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 213 


(il) There is one characteristic of the prophetic con- 
sciousness for which due allowance must be made. To 
the prophet his own age is so pregnant with moral and 
religious issues, that he sees the divine judgment on human 
history as imminent. He does not perceive the long and 
slow processes of the divine purpose ; behind the events of 
the present he sees the final issue of human history. It 
is this sense of the immediate divine presence, involving 
the hope of the ‘nstant divine action, that invests present 
events with their decisive significance, and gives such 
urgency to the threat of judgment or offer of mercy. 
Because the prophet’s insight sees the eternal in the 
temporal, the far-off future appears to him as at the very 
door. In this way we may account for the expectation 
in the Apostolic Age of an immediate Second Advent of 
Christ. 

(iii) It is evident that the future can be spoken of only 
in figurative language, can be envisaged only in terms of the 
present. So constant is change in human history, that the 
conditions of thought and life in one generation do not 
correspond to these of the preceding or the succeeding. 
Prophecy, even of events in the present order, cannot be 
literal, still less when what is involved is another order 
of existence. How can the temporal express the eternal, 
the mortal the immortal? Earth cannot speak the 
* language of heaven. How could the first century antici- 
pate and describe the conditions of the last century of 
human history? Howat the commencement of the Kingdom 
of God on earth could the consummation be seen in open 
vision? Without supposing psychological monstrosities, 
which even divine omnipotence would not make credible, 
we cannot treat even the New Testament as a handbook 
to heaven or hell. | 

(iv) We cannot by any ingenuity of exegesis escape the 
fact that the Apostolic Age expected a speedy Second 
Coming of Christ in power and glory. That Second Coming 
has not taken place; and we may ask ourselves whether, 
forced to change the date, we should not also be led to 


214 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  {[cz. 


change the form of our hope. We have come to recognise 
that God’s method in history as in nature is evolutionary 
and not catastrophic, although evolution does not exclude 
periods of rapid human advance, and of decisive divine 
action. And to this conception of evolution we must 
adjust our interpretation of the eschatological teaching 
of the New Testament, based on the now duly recognised 
principle of interpreting prophetic and apocalyptic 
writings. 

(3) Without entering into any minute discussion of the 
New Testament eschatology, there are four subjects in 
regard to which our Christian thought to-day must be 
defined—the Second Coming of Christ, the Resurrection 
of the Body, the General Judgment, and the Final Destiny. 

(i) As regards the Second Coming of Christ, we may apply 
the principle of interpretation to the expectation of it 
that we apply to the predictions of the First Coming. 
Jesus claimed to fulfil the law and the prophets; but He 
fulfilled the Messianic hope not by a literal correspondence 
of His life with the prophetic predictions ; but in filling full, 
carrying on to completeness the hope, He transcended, and 
necessarily transcended, the predictions. The Second 
Coming may be in the same measure conceived as tran- 
scending all the expectations of it. Surely the most vital 
Christian experience shows the direction in which we are 
to look. After the Resurrection the Christian community 
became assured of His own presence to save and bless, and 
did not experience an absence that must be ended by a 
Return. So intense a personal communion as Paul enjoyed, 
and as in some measure Christian saints since have enjoyed, 
is a fulfilment, real or partial, of the expectation. It 
may be said that Paul still cherished the hope of the 
Second Advent, even when he was speaking of being 
crucified and risen with Christ. But may we not regard 
this as an instance of the husk still clinging to the kernel ? 
It is true that this spiritual communion falls short of the 
Christian aspiration in two respects. Firstly, the believer 
does desire a clearer vision and a closer communion than 


Ix.] THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 215 


are here and now his; his sight is often blurred, and his 
fellowship interrupted. But has not Christian faith, 
without any deliberation, transferred this vision and 
communion from earth to heaven ? For Paul to be absent 
from the body was to be present with the Lord, while to 
be at home in the body was to be absent from Him; ! 
and it is for this reason that although to him to live is 
Christ, to die is gain.2, Even if the writer of 1 John was 
thinking of the Second Advent in the Apocalyptic sense, 
his words express what the Christian looks for as heaven’s 
highest blessing. ‘ We know that, when He shall appear, 
we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.’ 3 
At death on entrance into the heavenly life the clearer 
vision and closer communion, resulting in greater resem- 
blance, are now expected by Christian faith. But secondly, 
this is only an individual hope, and, if it were all, it might 
be regarded as selfish. The Christian cannot be indifferent 
about earth’s goal, even when he looks to heaven as his 
_ home. He desires and expects the victory of the cause 

_ of Christ in the world, the gathering in of all the nations 
into the Church of Christ, the extension of the Kingdom 
of God unto the ends of the earth, the consummation of 
human progress in the experienced Saviourhood and 
confessed Lordship of Jesus Christ throughout the world, 
the redemption of humanity unto God in the Son of God. 
Whether the fulfilment of God’s purpose of grace in Christ 
will be accompanied even on earth by some fresh mani- 
festation of the power and glory of Christ, is a question on 
which it is wise to keep silence; but what to the writer 
does seem certain is that the expectation of the Second 
Advent includes, as it is fulfilled in Christian thought and 
life to-day, the experience of Christ’s presence here and 
now, the expectation of clearer vision, closer communion, 
and greater resemblance in heaven, and the conviction that 
the Sovereignty of Christ’s Saviourhood will yet be fully 
owned on earth. Whether this Christian hope, individual 
and universal, is reasonable, we shall later inquire; but 


1 2 Cor. v. 6-8, 2 Phil. i, 21. 3 1 John iii. 2. 


216 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS (cH. 


we must now pass to the transformation in our thought 
of the conception of the Resurrection of the Body. 

(i) There is one element in the primitive expectation 
that caused difficulty even in the Apostolic Age. When 
the Second Advent was expected within the first Christian 
generation, believers never considered the condition in 
which they might find themselves, if death anticipated 
that event in their experience. Paul has to comfort the 
Thessalonians regarding their dead that ‘we which are 
alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not 
prevent them which are asleep,’ for ‘the dead in Christ 
shall rise first’ ; 1 and in 1 Corinthians he has to state more 
fully the difference between the raising of the dead and 
the sudden change that will be experienced by the living.? 
He himself seems to have felt some anxiety about his 
condition, if death came for him before the Second 
Advent. ‘In this we groan, earnestly desiring to be 
clothed upon with our house which is from heaven: if 
so be that being clothed, we shall not be found naked.’ 3 
Here he seems to expect that at death already the soul 
would be reclothed in the heavenly body. IE s0, why 
another clothing at the general resurrection ? To suppose, 
as has been done, an interim body for the intermediate 
state, or a condition of semi-consciousness and reduced 
vitality till the general resurrection, when the spiritual 
body and the eternal life will be attained, is to indulge in 
worthless speculation. Christian thought, again without 
deliberation, cuts the Gordian knot by assuming that at 


death souls pass at once to their eternal destiny. We must , 
abandon the idea of a general resurrection as involved in 
insoluble difficulties, as belonging to the Apocalyptic husk | 
of the Christian hope. But what is the kernel? The — 


-_ ee 


Greek regarded the body as the prison of the soul, and so 


conceived immortality as the continuance of the dis- 
embodied soul. For the Jew man as living soul was the 
Spirit of God breathed into the flesh ; and so immortality 
meant for him also resurrection, body united to soul, 


1 1 Thess, iv. 15, 16. 21 Cor. xv, 35, 51. 3 2 Cor. v. 2, 8. 


Ix.] THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 217 


Our modern thought cannot maintain the Greek dualism 
of mind and matter, soul and body. As the physicist 
presses further and further back his speculation about the 
constitution of matter, it becomes less and_ less gTOSS 
matter, the antithesis of mind. As the psychologist 
pursues his inquiry, he finds how closely related are body 
and mind. We cannot conceive disembodied soul; we 
must think of personality as having its organ. This does 
not mean that thought is a function of brain as the 
materialist argues, for mind is the prius of all our thinking. 
It does not mean that human personality is so dependent 
on its present organ as to be destroyed by its dissolution ; 
but it does mean that when we try to conceive personality, 
we cannot but think of it as expressed in, and exercised 
through, an organ. As we watch the transition from 
inorganic to organic, as we observe the subduing of matter 
to the ends of mind in the changeful expression of the face, 
the manifold tones of the voice, even the quick gestures 
of the body, as we learn from science about ether, and forms 
of matter and force other than our senses now directly 
apprehend, it becomes credible that human personality 
may in a future life possess the necessary organ of action 
and communication, of a quality which will make it a 
perfect servant. In contrast to this natural it is possible 
to conceive in this sense a spiritual body. Be this con- 
jecture as it may, the Christian hope is that complete 
_ personality will be ours in the future life. All the absurd- 
ities about the identity of the body laid in the grave and 
the body raised, for which the literalism of orthodoxy is 
responsible, fall aside in such a view, and can even be 
brushed aside as utterly unscriptural, as what Paul insists on 
is the contrast between the natural and the spiritual body. 

(iii) The conception of the General Judgment must under- 
go a similar transformation ; and the transformation has 
begun in the New Testament itself. The Fourth Gospel 
represents the ministry of Jesus as the judgment of men. 
‘ He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that 
believeth not is condemned already, because he hath 


218 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS — [cu 


not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 
And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the 
world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because 
their deeds were evil.’! Jesus Himself is represented as 
saying, ‘For judgment I am come into this world; that 
they which see not might see, and that they which see 
might be made blind.’2 The grace of Christ is the test of 
man’s moral condition; faith in Him shows affinity and 
attraction to truth and goodness ; rejection of Him proves 
antagonism ; thus human character reveals itself in the 
choice for or against Him. We are compelled to recognise 
to-day that there are men morally Christian in spirit and 
purpose who are hindered by intellectual difficulties from 
making the Christian confession. When clearer light 
comes to them, we may be confident their worthy life will 
find its completion in their faith in Him. There are also 
men who make the Christian confession, whose lives do 
not accord with Christ’s demand; if they are not con- 
sciously deceivers, the clearer light that will come to 
them will we may expect lead them to change the semblance 
for the substance of the Christian life. With all the 
necessary qualifications the Christian must maintain, 
however, that the attitude of the soul to Christ is decisive 
of moral condition, and ultimately of final destiny. The 
common assumption in Christian popular belief is that 
each soul at death passes to heaven or hell, to perfect bliss 
or to absolute woe. This assumption is unwarranted. 
We cannot assert that the development for good or evil 
is so completed at death as to exclude all possibility of 
further change. Even the saints are not perfect in holiness, 
and the physical event cannot be conceived as perfecting 
them. And the sinners are not so abandoned to evil as 
to be beyond all hope. It is a legitimate inference from 
the position Christian faith assigns to Christ as Judge to 
maintain that none is finally condemned until there is an 
absolute rejection of Christ, known sufficiently to make 
that choice the decisive revelation of the moral character. 


1 John iii. 18, 19, 2 ix. 39, 


1x.] THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 219 


If any in this life have so rejected Him no man can tell, 
or should dare to judge: how the choice will be given in 
the next life it would be folly for us to speculate. Even 
orthodox thought has made the concession regarding the 
heathen that they cannot be condemned for not believing 
in One of whom they have never heard, and has suggested 
that they will be judged by ‘the light of nature.’ But 
can the slum-dwellers in our cities be regarded as having 
so heard and understood as to be capable of a fully con- 
scious choice? And is it not more in accord with the 
Christian view of God that somehow and somewhere every 
man will have opportunity of accepting or rejecting the 
fully revealed grace of God in Jesus Christ ? 

(iv) As regards the final destiny of men the doctrine 
current in orthodox evangelical Protestantism was that 
the wicked at death passed to hell to suffer endless torments, 
and the righteous to heaven to enjoy eternal bliss. But 
two alternative views have been urged. The theory of © 
conditional immortality is this: man is not by nature im- 
mortal, but eternal life is the gift of Christ ; thus those who 
believe in Christ gain immortality, the unbelieving cease to 
exist. Thus is the theory stated as broadly as possible 
without regard to the differences of individual view. The 
theory of universal restoration is that ultimately all will be 
saved ; for it is inconceivable that the love of God should 
not finally overcome all sin and unbelief. Texts can be 
quoted in support of each of these views ; and it is not our 
purpose here to decide which is more or less scriptural ; but 
we may test each by the general principles of Christian 
faith. Firstly, as has already been urged in the previous 
section, we cannot regard physical death as so decisive of 
final destiny. It is moral and spiritual condition that fixes 
the judgment. Secondly, it is incredible that the God and 
Father of the Lord Jesus Christ should keep His creatures 
and children alive to endure endless torments. How it 
was possible for Christian men to believe in God as love, 
and yet to believe that multitudes were in agony, and 
would be for ever in hell, is one of these contradictions of 


220 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS (CH. 


the huraan mind that the writer cannot pretend to under- 
stand. Thirdly, eternal life is not to be conceived as an 
external gift bestowed on condition of faith in Christ, nor 
can man be thought of as by nature mortal. Personality 
as rational, moral, spiritual, social, is destined, because 
adapted, for immortality. The eternal life in Christ is 
the fulfilment of the soul’s possibility and promise. The 
theory of conditional immortality clings to single texts, 
often interpreted with a prosaic literalness, and ignores 
these wider considerations of the Christian view of man 
as child of God; but it does suggest the truth that if the 
personality deliberately rejects its own fulfilment in the 
eternal life in Christ, it may forfeit its destiny, because 
losing its adaptation, for immortality. It seems to the 
writer credible that the finally impenitent, if such there 
should be, not by any act of divine omnipotence annihil- 
ating them, but by the inevitable decay of the personality 
refusing to realise its ideal, may cease to be; volition, 
consciousness, vitality, diminishing to vanishing point. 
Fourthly, this conjecture is forced upon the writer because 
he cannot commit himself to dogmatic universalism. Divine 
omnipotence cannot solve moral and religious problems. 
Salvation must be as freely accepted by man as it is offered 
by God. We find men in this life so defiant of goodness 
and grace that we cannot assert that final impenitence 
is impossible. The grace of God in Christ now appears 
so sufficient, so urgent, so final, that we cannot conceive 
what more God can do to save man. We may desire and 
hope that all shall be saved, but we cannot assert the 
salvation of all, and must recognise the possibility of a 
final impenitence. We must leave the issue of God’s world 
to God’s wisdom, holiness, and grace. 

(4) It has been necessary thus to translate into terms of 
modern Christian thought the eschatology of the New 
Testament, but in dealing with the Christian hope, and 
the defence and commendation of it, we can now confine 
ourselves to two topics only—the individual and the 
universal aspects of the hope. The problem of the condi- 


Ix. ] THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 221 


tions of the judgment of men and of the final destiny of 
the wicked must engage Christian thought, but it does 
not properly belong to the Christian hope. That hope is 
confined to what the Christian expects for himself and the 
cause of Christ. For himself the Christian believes that 
death does not end all; that the eternal life in Christ begun 
on earth will be continued in heaven; that his mental, 
moral, and spiritual development will be completed till 
he knows as he is known, till he sees Christ as He is, till 
he loves Him as He is worthy of being loved, till he shall 
be like Him, till in Christ God shall be for him all in all. 
For the cause of Christ he believes that the Gospel shall 
be spread unto the ends of the earth, that the Kingdom of 
God shall grow until all human society shall be under the 
sovereignty of the divine grace, that the purpose of God 
to redeem mankind and to reconcile the world unto Him- 
self in Christ shall at last be accomplished. Is this hope 
a vain dream, or is it the divine promise and the divine 
pledge of a gracious and blessed reality? Can we show 
any reasons for this hope ? We may look at the universal: 
before we turn to the individual aspect of the hope. 


I 


(1) It may seem the extravagance of thought, the 
audacity of belief, to suppose that the whole world will be 
won for Christ; but there are ‘reasons and reasons’ 
why we are not ‘ashamed of the Gospel of Christ as the 
power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth ; 
to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.’ The ‘little Jew’ 
who made this declaration when he purposed to visit 
Rome with his message would have appeared as foolish 
in the eyes of Roman lawyer or Greek philosopher; and 
yet within three centuries a Roman Emperor decided that 
it was good policy to confess himself a Christian. When 
the Roman Empire fell, and the hordes of barbarism over- 
whelmed its law and order, how foolish would have seemed 
the hope that Rome would lay the yoke of its faith on 


292 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS — [cH 


the necks of its conquerors; and yet these races, after 
centuries of theological and_ ecclesiastical subjection, 
restored the religion they had received to a form worthier 
than that in which it had come to them. For centuries 
the Christian Churches were not missionary, but at the 
beginning of the nineteenth century the vision of a world 
to be won for Christ appeared to a few elect spirits, who, 
though mocked and opposed, resolved to carry through 
the enterprise, and now a Christian Church would be 
ashamed to confess that it did not believe in missions. 
If we think of all the lands where a beginning of Christian 
culture, civilisation, and society has been made, of the 
converts won and the churches founded, and the sure 
promise of still greater things to come within one century, 
we may from the history of the past draw encouragement 
for the future. 

(2) But when we look beyond the missionary enterprise 
to the general historical conditions that have made it, and 
are still making it possible, we gain still fuller assurance. 
The world is becoming one as it never was before. Con- 
quest, colonisation, commerce, are binding the ends of the 
earth together. There are now no closed lands, no isolated 
races, no peoples that can live unto themselves. Our 
daily papers contain reports of the conditions in Thibet. 
China is, as fast as it can, imitating the institutions of the 
‘foreign devils.’ Men are talking of ‘the black peril’ in 
America and the ‘ yellow peril’ in Asia; and surely on 
the Congo and the Amazon ‘the white’ peril may be 
spoken of. For the European who comes without Christ 
to any people is a danger to it. Whether we welcome the 
change or not, mankind is becoming one body, the members 
of which must suffer or rejoice together. The Roman 
Empire fell because it had no soul great enough for its 
body, for Christianity came to it too late to prevent its 
decay. Does not the body of humanity want a soul? 
Unless the closer relations of nations and races and con- 
tinents are to become the occasion of growing jealousy, 
enmity, and conflict, there must be found some harmonising 


Ix. | THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 223 


purpose. Do we not need a common human morality, 
and, to sustain it, a common human religion? If we think 
that morality can do without religion, we had better 
study closely the moral problem in France or in Japan, 
and we will discover that both French and Japanese 
lovers of their country are looking about for some faith 
that will cleanse and uplift life. 

(3) It is held by some thinkers that the religion the 
world needs must be either a mosaic of the best in all the 
great world religions, or a Christianity that has adapted 
itself to the genius of each race. The comparative study 
of religions is sometimes held as disproving the exclusive 
claim that the missionary enterprise is making for the 
Christian faith. It is impossible here to deal with the 
subject as it deserves; but the writer may be allowed to 
state his conviction as one who has carefully compared the 
religions of the world as they are, not only in literature 
but in life, that the fundamental Christian verities, the 
personality, perfection, and Fatherhood of God, the reality 
of sin, the necessity of atonement, the sufficiency of the 
grace of Jesus Christ, the presence and the power of the 
Holy Spirit of God, the hope of a blessed and a glorious 
immoftality, stated with no sectarian accretions or 
ecclesiastical assumptions, can and do make their appeal 
to the human reason and conscience everywhere. He has 
not discovered any truths in other religions that the 
Christian Gospel lacks ; he has not found in one of them 
the moral dynamic that Christian faith offers; he has not 
seen a Master of the soul who can in truth and grace 
be placed above, or even beside, Jesus Christ. Modern 
Christian scholarship is surely enabling us to strip off 
the husk of European modes of thought from the kernel 
of the Christian truth, which is no more Occidental than 
Oriental ; and the history of the Christian Church should 
teach us that distortion and corruptions enter where the 
environment is allowed to dominate the form in which that 
truth is presented.! 


1 See The Christian Certainty, pp. 8-15. 


224. A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS _ [ca 


(4) But it may be urged that the problems which a 
universal religion might solve are urgent, and the progress 
of Christianity during the last century has been relatively 
so slow, that it is more likely that the opportunity will 
pass, and the world-history assume a phase much less 
favourable than the present appears to be for the Christian 
conquest. Calculations have been made to prove that at the 
present rate of advance some centuries must elapse before 
India and China can become really Christian. But these 
calculations ignore four considerations which sustain hope. 

(i) The last century has been preparing the conditions 
for a much more rapid advance in the future than in the 
past. Society in India and China is being leavened by the 
Christian spirit, and there will soon be an environment 
much more congenial to Christian faith than that of the 
past has been. It is unreasonable to ignore the changed 
moral and social situation since the beginning of last 
century, and assume that only the same rate of progress 
will be maintained. 

(ii) In moral and religious progress there is a factor that 
is not calculable. There are crises as well as continuity 
in human history; periods of slow advance are followed 
by eras of rapid transformation. For faith there are divine 
initiatives which determine unexpected and inexplicable 
stages of progress. As has already been indicated in 
dealing with Jesus’ view of the coming of the Kingdom of 
God, there is the divine wisdom, power and grace immanent 
in human history, and awaiting the fuller exercise of man’s 
faith for fuller manifestation. The Protestant Reformation 
and the Evangelical Revival show that great changes can 
be affected in a short time. In Korea there has been in 
recent years a movement towards Christianity which 
recalls to the witnesses the records of the Apostolic Age. 
More faith in the saving grace of God in Christ Jesus, in 
the presence and power of the Spirit of God, and more 
confident and strenuous effort, inspired by faith, will to- 
day, as in days past, speed the coming of the Kingdom of 
God upon earth. 


Ix. ] THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 225 


(iii) The present opportunity may not be used to the 
full by the Christian Church; the conditions of world- 
history may assume a phase less favourable to the spread 
and growth of the common faith for mankind ; social 
prejudice, national pride, commercial greed, may delay that 
unifying of mankind in Christ: for the history of the 
past teaches us that progress is not uniform, but that 
stagnation or even retrogression follows advance; yet 
the believer in Christ will not lose hope ; his judgment of 
the value of Christ to himself will sustain bis expectation 
that Christ will yet become the common treasure of man- 
kind, that the Father-God will recover one family on earth. 

(iv) If there be any reason in the Universe at all, its 
movement must be towards some goal ; progress must have 
some consummation ; and what fulfilment of the world’s 
hope can be conceived fitter or worthier than that all 
mankind should become one in the common knowledge of, 
common love for, common obedience to, the one God and 
Father in Christ ? 


IIt 


(1) We may anticipate that ‘far-off divine event to 
which the whole creation moves,’ but we do not expect 
to participate in it, at least on earth: for death stands at 
the portal, and the hope of the Apostolic Age of survival 
to the Second Coming of the Lord does not sustain us, 
But we are inspired by the hope of a blessed and glorious 
immortality. Can reasons be given for that hope? For 
the Christian the best reason is in his own faith in Jesus 
Christ. 

(i) For the Hebrew saint one of the hardest problems 
was the doubt and fear that his happy fellowship with 
God might be interrupted by death, as in the common 
belief Sheol, the abode of the dead, was unblessed by the 
presence of God. But faith triumphed over this un- 
certainty ; and the saint found in his joy in God, and God’s 
favour towards him, the assurance that God’s companions 
would not be left death’s victims. It is true that the 

P 


99 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS _ [cu. 


interpretation is disputed by some scholars ; but for the 
writer it seems certain that in the sixteenth and seventeenth 
Psalms faith in God’s unbroken fellowship soars upward 
to hope of victory over death, and blessedness in God’s 
presence. ‘Thou wilt not leave my soul in Sheol; neither 
wilt thou suffer thine holy one (loved and loving) to see 
corruption. Thou wilt show me the path of life: in thy 
presence is fulness of Joy; at thy right hand there are 
pleasures for evermore.’ ‘As for me, I will behold thy 
face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when I awake 
with thy likeness.’ It is this hope, borne of faith, that 
Jesus Himself confirms; for the proof of immortality He 
derives from the words, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and 
the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’; that ‘God is 
not the God of the dead, but of the living,’* is no 
argumentum ad hominem, but a declaration of the truth 
that fellowship with God is the promise and pledge of 
immortality. In the same passage He corrects the gross 
view of the future life with which the Sadducees taunted 
the Pharisees ; and affirms that the material and sensuous 
conditions of this life will not be continued into, or at the 
resurrection restored in the future life. 

(ii) Possibly it was His sense of filial relation to God 
that enabled Jesus Himself to face His death with the 
assurance of His own resurrection, and to offer that assur- 
ance as a comfort to His disciples when He foretold His 
death to them. As they would not take seriously His 
warning, so they were uncheered by His assurance. The 
evidence for the Resurrection of Christ has already been 
dealt with in Chapteriv. That fact is the sure foundation 
of the Christian hope. He is the first-fruits of the harvest 
of life from the grave; He is the first-born among many 
brethren; He is the life-giving spirit. As He was raised, 
so will all that are His. Because He lives, in Him they 
live also. The aspiration of the Hebrew has become the 
certainty of the Christian saint. 

(iii) But in the Christian life itself there is the assurance 


1 Matt. xxii, 32 


Ix.] THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 227 


of the Christian hope. In Christ the believer lives as a 
child of God, forgiven, cleansed, renewed, being sanctified 
and perfected by the Spirit of God, gaining an ever closer 
intimacy with God as Father, looking less and less on the 
things seen and temporal, and more and more on the 
things unseen and eternal, finding all things working 
together for his good. The life that he now has ‘ hid with 
Christ in God’ is an eternal life, for a life sharing God’s 
own eternity ; and so death is, according to his growing 
faith, ‘ null and nought,’ and immortality is an inheritance, 
into the possession of which he is already entering. 

(iv) It is the hour and the article of death that tests 
whether such a faith is an illusion, or has hold on reality. 
The emotional condition at death is often dependent on 
physical states; and so doubt and fear, which faith still 
holds in check, do not prove that the confidence has been 
misplaced. But, on the other hand, there are well-authen- 
ticated cases of triumph over physical agony, of songs of 
praise in the valley of the shadow, of a glow upon the 
countenance that seemed like a gleam caught of the coming 
glory. Many who have been bereaved of their dearest, 
but have had the Christian hope to sustain them in the 
hour of loneliness, have come to feel without any sensible 
tokens the reality of the continued life of their beloved ; 
and in their most sacred moments of fellowship with the 
Lord have known also the communion of the saints in 
heaven and on earth. Looking unto J esus, the author and 
finisher of faith, they have felt themselves encompassed 
by the great cloud of witnesses (Heb. xii. 1), 

(2) For the Christian believer this evidence suffices, and 
more than suffices; for if Christ be not risen, his faith is 
vain, he is yet in his sin, the loved ones who ‘ are fallen 
asleep in Christ are perished,’ he is ‘ of all men most miser- 
able.’1 The certainty of his hope is bound up with the 
reality of this experience of Christ as Saviour and Lord. 
But to commend this Christian hope to those who have not 
yet the Christian experience, it is necessary to show how 


1 1 Cor. xv. 14-19. 


228 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS _ feu. 


it completes and confirms the other arguments that can 
make appeal to the human conscience or reason. 

(i) In describing man’s personality, it was pointed out 
that he is in the making, and not made; most character- 
istic of him are his ideals which are being gradually realised. 
He is committed to the quest for truth, the struggle for 
holiness, the need of love, the yearning for blessedness. 
Here his ideals are never perfectly realised; his mental, 
moral, and social development is never completed ; his 
aspiration, purpose, and endeavour point above and 
beyond the range of his earthly experience. It is not from 
man’s failure or disappointment on earth that we argue 
for the necessity of success and satisfaction in heaven ; 
but the proof lies rather in this that his present attainment 
gives promise of attainment still greater ; it is as he 
realises his ideals that he becomes more and more aware 
how much greater they are than any realisation which 
under present conditions is possible to him. There are 
many who so live that this promise of immortality is not 
theirs; but we may surely regard the men who live for 
the ideals as typical, and those who are content with earth 
as undeveloped. More significant for the meaning of man’s 
life is the saint or seer than the worldling or sensualist. 
It is against reason to suppose that these ideals are only 
mocking illusions, and that all man’s aspiration and 
endeavour for truth, holiness, love, blessedness must end 
in nothingness. As we appreciate these ideals, therefore, 
shall we apprehend this proof of immortality. 

(ii) We may develop more fully the argument implicit 
in the human affections. Love protests against death as 
an end of the dear fellowship of heart with heart. It is 
impossible to believe that the loved are lost. Even the 
natural affections assume the continuance of the loved 
ones, as the funeral rites of nearly all peoples show. As 
love becomes more ideal, a fellowship in the higher interests 
of life, the worth of each personality to the other makes 
the possibility of utter loss through death less conceivable. 
Tennyson in his In Memoriam has shown how hope seeks 


Ix.] THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 229 


root in, draws nourishment from, and grows in strength by, 
the soil of love bereaved. Marriage as the Sadducees 
in their story represented it, as the means of raising up 
seed, must cease with the earthly conditions ; but the love 
of husband and wife which becomes a common life in good- 
ness and godliness cannot cease to be. So in every sacred 
bond that binds human souls to one another there is surely 
given a pledge of love’s immortality. 

(iii) There is another argument, which has commended 
itself to so great thinkers as Butler and Kant, but which 
seems to move on altogether a lower plane of thought and 
feeling. A common assumption that condition and char- 
acter accord is contradicted by the common facts of life ; 
the righteous do not always prosper, nor do the wicked 
always perish. The view of the first Psalm is the problem 
of the Book of Job; the hero of that tragedy suffers, and 
yet he will not be convinced by the arguments of his 
friends that he is suffering for his wickedness. The 
problem here is not solved, but closed by the declaration 
that God’s ways are inscrutable. The portrait of the 
Suffering Servant of Isaiah liii. offers a solution; the 
righteous suffers on behalf of, for the salvation of, the 
wicked. A solution of the problem has, however, been 
sought in the assumption that in a future life the inequali- 
ties of the present will be redressed ; the divine judgment 
on character will there be made manifest in condition ; 
the righteous will be blessed, and the wicked will be 
miserable. As a desire for personal happiness, and for 
the punishment of those who have wronged us, this hope 
of future judgment is not distinctively Christian. It 
involves the assumption, too, that God must reward good- 
ness with happiness, and wickedness with misery ; but 
what if goodness is its own reward, and wickedness its 
own penalty? A Christian form may be given to the 
arguments by regarding the future life as the opportunity 
for final decision which the conditions of this life do not 
equally give to all men. 

(iv) An argument for immortality was based on the 


230 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS fon. 


indivisibility of the soul; as we have outgrown this 
metaphysic, such a proof can no longer appeal to us. 
But it suggests another in accord with our modern 
psychology. In the course of personal development, the 
unity and the identity of the personality advances. A 
man becomes more completely master of himself; thought, 
feeling, will become more harmonious; the past is taken 
up more fully into the present, and the future is taken 
account of. Consciousness tends to become more self- 
consciousness. As experience is gathered, as character 
is formed, the personality becomes more distinctive, less 
dependent on the environment, and more determined from 
within itself. The dependence on the body can never be 
abolished, and as physical infirmity comes, the personality 
is hindered in its activities by its organ; but yet the 
personality becomes more and more identified with the 
inner life which is less dependent on the body. If we 
consider the long duration, the manifold factors, the 
costly experiences, and the strenuous endeavours of this 
process of personal development, apart from the ideals 
that are being realised, or the relationships formed, can 
such a product be destined for nothing better than dis- 
solution ? The growing detachment of the personality 
in its progress from the body also points to the possibility 
that the personality so formed is not entirely dependent 
on its organ, and may, having by means of that organ 
attained a certain stage of development, become inde- 
pendent of it. 

(3) The objections to the Christian hope may be 
glanced at. 

(i) For naturalism man is so entirely a product of 
nature that it seems absurd to exempt him from the 
universal process of evolution and devolution, birth, 
growth, decay, death. But this estimate of man is not 
only contradicted by philosophical idealism and Christian 
faith, it is opposed to man’s consciousness of himself ; 
he does distinguish himself as personal from nature, and) 
we must deny the testimony of his reason, conscience, 


1x.]J THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 231 


affections, and ideals if we are to assign to him the place 
naturalism does. Mr. Balfour, in his book on the 
Foundations of Belief, has given fully the argument against 
naturalism from the standpoint of man’s higher interests. 

(ii) Materialism declares immortality impossible, because 
thought is only a function of brain, and the dissolution of 
the body must be the destruction of the self. Even if the 
vital processes could be reduced to chemical and physical 
changes, yet in every organism there is a direction of the 
processes that neither chemistry nor physics can explain. 
It has already been shown that Sir Oliver Lodge maintains 
that life transcends and utilises force; Dr. Ward has 
shown that in organic processes there is teleology, the 
mental factor; and Professor James maintains that the rela- 
tion of brain to mind is not productive, but permissive or 
transmissive: the body is the musical instrument; it is 
not the melody, nor the mind that conceives, and delights 
in it. Materialism is so inadequate as a philosophy of the 
world, that its objection to the Christian hope need not 
be taken seriously. 

(iii) There is a secularism which regards this earthly 
life as sufficient for man, and so denies the necessity of 
another life; there is also a pessimism for which this 
earthly life is so unrelievably bad, that any continuance 
of existence seems undesirable. Both these attitudes to 
life are so utterly opposed to the Christian view, that it is 
only if the Christian view is shown false in its entirety that 
these objections need be taken into account. But they 
are assuredly opposed to the common sentiment. Men 
generally do not find this life so good that they cannot 
desire a better, nor do they find it so bad that non-exist- 
ence would seem to them desirable. Christianity offers 
an eternal life that links the earthly life with the heavenly 
in the ever-growing good of the holy and blessed life of the 
child of God, knowing, trusting and surrendering to the 
eternal and infinite holiness and blessedness of the Father- 
God. Such a faith begets an unquenchable and sustaining 
hope. 


232 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS  [cu. 


(4) The individual and universal aspect of the Christian 
hope cannot be kept apart. In the Epistle to the Hebrews 
(xi. 39-40) there is a statement that suggests a close 
connection. ‘And these all having obtained a good re- 
port through faith, received not the promise ; God having 
provided some better thing for us, that they without us 
should not be made perfect.’ Does not this suggest that 
the blessed and glorious immortality of believers will not 
be completed until the purpose of God on earth is fulfilled, 
until the Kingdom of God is come on earth as it ever is in 
heaven ? We have been led to abandon the external form 
of the eschatological programme of the New Testament ; 
but we may now discern in it a fresh truth, that there will 
be a consummation of human history, as to the form of 
which it is idle to speculate, and that the generations who 
have fallen asleep in Christ will participate in it, and find 
their own glorious and blessed immortality completed 
therein. Whether those who have passed within the veil 
of death do now in any way share our earthly life, in pity 
for and help of us, none can affirm, but who could deny ? 
Can earth’s sin, sorrow, and shame in any way reach their 
glory and blessedness ? To mortals on earth it may seem 
as if any such contact would lessen the glory and blessed- 
ness of the immortal. But who can say? Sacrificial love 
may taste the deepest blessedness, and display the brightest 
glory. The redeemed may be sharing the saving ministry 
of the Redeemer. But be this as it may, there seems to 
be more probability in the conjecture that the redeemed 
shall share the joy, and shall be made perfect in the triumph 
of the Redeemer in the world, which in Him God is recon- 
ciling unto Himself. What Paul means when he declares 
that in the end the Son Himself shall be subjected ‘ that 
God may be all in all,’ has baffled all expositors. Does 
it mean that as the life of mankind becomes one in Christ, 
and through Him one with God, not by absorption, but 
in holy love, so God shall be known as one in Father, 
Son and Spirit, as we cannot now conceive that divine 
unity ? (1 Cor. xv. 28). 


IX. ] THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 233 


(5) This Christian hope thus carries us to the very 
confines of what we dare to think. But such an aspiration 
is not to be dismissed as a vain speculation, for it grows 
out of a real experience of salvation through Christ from 
sin, death, and doom, to the light, the life, and the love of 
God Himself. The attempt has been made in this volume 
to state as briefly and yet as fully as possible the argument 
for the Christian {.ith, to commend to reason and con- 
science Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord; but the writer 
must close with the confession that logical demonstration 
seems to himself inadequate to lead from unbelief to faith. 
There must be felt the moral and religious need of forgive- 
ness from God, there must be the hunger and the thirst 
of the soul for God; there must be apprehended the 
reality of the Saviour from sin, the Bread from Heaven 
and the Water of Life, in whom God meets man to save 
and bless. The apologist to be fully effective must become 
the evangelist, and his own personal experience is the 
strongest argument that he can offer. ‘I know whom I 
have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep 
that which I have committed unto Him against that day.’ 
“TI am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, 
nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor 
things to come. Nor height, nor depth, nor any other 
creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, 
which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ ? 


12 Tim. i, 12; Romans viii. 38, 39. 


A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 


CHAPTER I 


Apologetics; or, Christianity Defensively Stated, by A. B. Bruce 
(New York, 1892); The Apologetic of the New Testament, by E. F. 
Scott (London, 1907); A Manual of Christian Evidences, by C. A. 
Row (London, 1890); Christianity, its Nature and its Truth, by A. 8. 
Peake (London, 1908); A First Primer of Apologetics, by R. Mackin- 
tosh (London, 1904); The Truth of Christianity, by J. Iverach (Edin- 
burgh); Handbook of Christian Evidences, by Stewart (Edinburgh, 
1896); Philosophy and Religion, by Hastings Rashdall (New York, 
1909); Faith and its Psychology, by W. R. Inge (New York, 1910); 
The Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief, by G. P. Fisher (New 
York, 1902). 


CHAPTER II 


The Study of Religion, by Morris Jastrow (New York, 1901); Intro- 
duction to the History of Religion, by F. B. Jevons (London, 1902); 
Modern Theories of Religion, by E. S. Waterhouse (London, 1910); 
History of Religion, by Allan Menzies (New York, 1900); Outlines of 
the History of Religion, by C. P. Tiele (London, 1896); Comparative 
Theology, by J. A. Macculloch (London, 1902); Naturalism and 
Agnosticism, by J. Ward (London, 1903); The Realm of Ends, by 
Ward (Cambridge, 1911); The Philosophy of the Christian Religion, 
by A. M. Fairbairn (London, 1902); Reason and Revelation, by 
J. R. Illingworth (London, 1902); The Chief End of Revelation, 
by A. B. Bruce (London, 1881); A System of Christian Doctrine, 
by Dorner, E.T., vol. ii. div. iii.; The Ritschlian Theology, by A. E. 
Garvie (Edinburgh, 1899). 


CHAPTER III 


Revelation and Inspiration, by James Orr (New York, 1910); The 
Miraculous Element in the Gospels, by A. B. Bruce (London, 1890); 
Divine Immanence, by J. R. Illingworth (London, 1898); Inspiration, 
by W. Sanday (1893); Inspiration and the Bible (1888), and Revelation 


and the Bible (1892), by R. F. Horton; Miracles in the New Testa- 
234 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 235 


ment, by J. M. Thompson (London, 1912, written from the stand- 
point of denial); Miracles and Christianity, by Wendland, translated 
by H. R. Mackintosh (London, 1911); Articles on ‘Prophecy’ in 
Hastings’ Bible Dictionary, vol. iv., ‘Revelation’ in the extra vol- 
ume, ‘Inspiration’ and ‘Miracle’ in the Encyclopedia Britannica 
(latest edition); The Christian Certainty amid the Modern Perplex- 
ity, by A. E. Garvie (London, 1911). 


CHAPTER IV 


The Quest of the Historical Jesus, by Albert Schweitzer (E.T., 
London, 1910); The Fact of Christ, by P. C. Simpson (London); 
The Living Christ and the Four Gospels, by R. W. Dale (London, 
1902); The Gospel History and its Transmission, by F. C. Burkitt 
(New York, 1906); The Criticism of the Fourth Gospel, by W. 
Sanday (New York, 1905); A Critical Introduction to the New Testa- 
ment, by A. 8. Peake (New York, 1909); Studies in the Inner Life of 
Jesus, by A. E. Garvie (London, 1907); What is Christianity ? by 
Harnack (E.T., London); The Communion of the Christian with 
God, by Herrmann (E.T., London). 


CHAPTER V 


The Christian Doctrine of Salvation, by G. B. Stevens (New York, 
1905); The Spiritual Principle of the Atonement, by J. S. Lidgett 
(London, 1901); The Cruciality of the Cross (London, 1909), The 
Work of Christ (1910), The Person and Place of Jesus Christ (1909), 
by P. T. Forsyth; The Cross and the Kingdom (Edinburgh, 1902), 
The Gospel of Reconciliation (1909), by W. L. Walker; The Christian 
Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation, by Albrecht Ritschl 
(E.T., Edinburgh, 1900); Studies of Paul and his Gospel, by A. E. 
Garvie (London, 1911). 


CHAPTER VI 


The Christian View of God and the World, by J. Orr (New York, 
1893); The Fatherhood of God, by J. 8. Lidgett (Edinburgh, 1902); 
The Christian Doctrine of God, by W. N. Clarke (New York, 1909); 
Personality, Human and Divine (London, 1894), Divine Immanence 
(1898), by J. R. Illingworth; Selections from_the Literature of 
Theism, edited by Caldecott and Mackintosh (Edinburgh, 1904); 
The Knowledge of God, by H. M. Gwatkin (2 volumes, New York, 
1906); A Study of Religion, by J. Martineau (2 volumes, Oxford, 
1889); The Idea of God in Early Religions, by F. B. Jevons 
(Cambridge, 1910); Theism in the Light of Present Science and 
Philosophy, by J. Iverach (London, 1900). 


236 A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS 


CHAPTER VII 


The Bible Doctrine of Man, by J. Laidlaw (Edinburgh, 1905); 
The Christian Doctrine of Man, by H. W. Robinson (Edinburgh, 
1911); The Origin and Propagation of Sin (Cambridge, 1906), The 
Fall and Original Sin (1903), by F. R. Tennant; Modern Theories 
of Sin, by W. E. Orchard (London, 1909); Evolution and the Fall, 
by F. J. Hall (London, 1910); The Elements of Ethics, by J. H. 
Muirhead (London, 1892); The Prolegomena to Ethics, by T. H. 
Green (Oxford, 1884); The Psychology of the Moral Self, by B. 
Bosanquet (London, 1897); God and My Neighbour, by Robert 
Blatchford (London, 1903); Anti-Nunquam, An Examination of ‘God 
and My Neighbour,’ by J. Warschauer (London, 1904). 


CHAPTER VIII 


Christian Ethics, by Newman Smyth (New York, 1892); A 
Handbook of Christian Ethics, by J. C. Murray (Edinburgh, 1908); 
Christian Ethics, by T. B. Strong (London, 1897); Christian 
Character, by J. R. Illingworth (London, 1905); The Ethics of the 
Christian Life, by T. von Haering (E.T., London, 1909); Jesus 
Christ and the Christian Character, Jesus Christ and the Social Ques- 
tion (London, 1907), by F. G. Peabody; The Social Teaching of Je- 
sus, by Shailer Matthews (London, 1906); Christ and Civilisation 
(London). 


CHAPTER IX 


The Christian Doctrine of Immortality, by 8S. D. F. Salmond 
(New York, 1901); The Last Things, by J. A. Beet (London, 1905); 
Lhe Christian Hope, by W. A. Brown (New York, 1912); the Article 
on ‘Eschatology’ in Hastings’ Bible Dictionary, vol. i.; the Arti- 
cles on ‘Eschatology’ and ‘Immortality’ in the Encyclopedia 
Britannica (last edition); Modern Belief in I mmortality, by 
Newman Smyth (New York, 1910); Science and I mmortality, by W. 
Osler (London, 1906); The Endless Life, by S. M’Chord Crothers 
(London, 1906); The Conception of Immortality, by Josiah Royce 
(London, 1906); The Eternal Life, by Hugo Miinsterberg (London, 
1906); Human Immortality, by W. James (London, 1906); Jmmor- 
tality, by A. W. Momerie (London). 


ABSOLUTE, 142 f, 

Absolute (Religion), 50. 
Activism, 19, 141. 
Acts, 81. 

Adoption, 182. 

Agnosticism, 16, 17, 139, 1438. 
Allen (Grant), 27. 

Analogy (Butler’s), 6. 
Anarchism, 198 f. 
Animatism, 52. 

Animism, 24, 32, 47, 52. 
Anselm, 5, 170. 
Anthropology, 21. 
Anthropomorphism, 144. 
Apocalyptic, 89, 93, 211. 
Apologetic, 1, 2, 9. 
Apologetics, 2, 9, 11, 12, 50. 
Apologeticus, 1. 

Apologists, 1, 3. 

Apology, 1, 2. 

Apostle, 65, 68. 

Aquinas, 79. 

Archeology, 21. 

Arnold (Matthew), 74. 
Asceticism, 208 f. 
Associationalism, 18. 
Atonement, 124, 132, 136, 181. 
Augsburg Confession, 6. 
Augustine, 5, 79, 119. 


BABYLONIAN (Mythology), 175. 


Bacon, 2. 

Balfour (Arthur), 8, 231. 
Bartlet (Vernon), 131. 
Bergson, 19, 45, 58, 141. 
Bible, 138. 

Birth (New), 163 


INDEX 


Blatchford, 169. 
Blessedness, 167, 

Body, 28. 

Book of the Dead, 28. 
Brahmanism, 52, 67. 
Browning, 145, 181. 
Bruce (A. B.), 9, 11. 
Buddeus, 79. 

Buddhism, 33, 36, 47, 206. 
Butler (Bishop), 6, 7, 229. 


CaIRD (Edward), 8, 18, 
Caldecott (A.), 8. 
Calvary, 124. 

Calvin, 6. 

Canon, 67. 

Casuistry, 189 f., 207. 
Causality, 45, 53, 79. 
Character, 97, 171. 
Childhood, 170, 178. 
Choice, 168. 

Christology, 81, 94, 98, 152. 
Church, 40, 160, 184, 207. 
Civilisation, 204. 

Clemen, 83 f. 

‘Common Sense,’ 18, 
Communism, 204. 


Comparative (Study of Religion), 20, 


22, 37, 41, 46, 223. 
Comparison, 46, 50. 
Comte, 30, 53. 
Conditional (Immortality), 219 f. 
Confucianism, 33, 36. 


Conscience, 118, 150, 174, 209, 228. 


Conversion, 164, 172, 175. 
Correlation, 45. 
Creationism, 170. 

237 


238 


Crime, 174. 

Criticism, 20, 41 f., 80, 83f., 89f., 
93, 191 f. 

Cross, 123, 132, 150, 181. 

Culture, 204. 


DALE (R. W.), 104. 

Daniel (Book of), 70. 

Darwin, 195. 

Death, 148, 176, 211, 225. 

Deism, 7, 1&6. 

Design, 7. 

Destiny (Final), 219 f. 

Determinism, 168. 

Development, 146, 163 f., 169, 172, 
177 £., 228. 

Dickens, 172. 

Divinity (Christ’s), 96, 113, 152. 

Docetism, 98. 

Doctrine, 128. 

Dogmatics, 11, 12. 

Drews, 84 f. 

Drummond (Henry), 163. 

Dualism, 158. 


EBRARD, 9. 

Ellis (Major), 54. 

Empiricism, 18. 

Energy, 53. 

Environment, 98, 169, 178. 

Epigenesis, 45. 

Epistemology, 17. 

Epistle to Diognetus, 4. 

Eschatology, 89, 191 f., 211. 

Eternal (Punishment), 219, 

Ethics, 11, 12. 

Ethnology, 21. 

Eucken, 19, 141, 167. 

Evidence, 76, 78. 

Evil, 145 f., 150. 

Evolution, 7, 8, 44 f., 57 f., 116, 164, 
172, 177 f., 179, 198, 209, 214. 

Experience, 49, 128, 185, 183, 214, 
227, 233. 


FaIRBAIRN (A. M.), 5, 7, 8, 146, 
178, 
Faith, 46, 128, 130, 150, 178, 209, 219. 


A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS 


Fall, 175, 179. 

Fatherhood (God’s), 129, 145, 182, 202. 

Fear, 26. 

Forgiveness, 116, 120 f., 129, 150, 
168, 181 f., 186. 

Forsyth (P. T.), 153. 

Fourth (Gospel), 100, 102, 108. 

Freedom (see Liberty). 


GARDNER (Percy), 43. 
Gautama, 36, 47, 206. 
Gethsemane, 97, 124, 
Ghosts, 27. 
Gilgamesch, 87. 
Glorification, 183. 
God, 1388 ff. 

Gods, 25, 141. 

Good (The), 25, 115. 
Gospels, 83, 97. 
Government, 198. 
Grace, 163, 179. 
Guilt, 119. 


HAECKEL, 16, 189. 

Hall (F. J.), 179. 

Hamilton (Sir William), 166. 

Harnack, 73, 76, 84, 91, 95, 101, 104, 
111, 123. 

Heaven, 194, 215. 

Hegel, 18, 23, 31, 141. 

Heredity, 98, 148, 169. 

Historic (Positivism), 48, 

History, 33, 80 f. 

Hoffding, 151. 

Hogg (A. G.), 91. 

Holiness, 116, 131, 167, 186, 194. 

Homer, 122. 

Hope, 151, 173, 194, 211 f, 

Humanity (Jesus’s), 95, 

Hume, 17, 18, 78, 80. 

Huxley (T.), 195 


IDEAL, 186 ff. 

Idealism, 18, 59, 141, 178, 230, 
Ideality, 167. 

Identity, 163, 175. 

Illingworth, 145. 

Immanence, 56, 61, 95, 118, 140, 156, 


INDEX 


Immortality, 28, 133, 148, 173, 216, 
220, 225 f. 

Incarnation, 81, 94, 144, 153 f., 166. 

Indeterminism, 168. 

Individualism, 201. 

Infinite, 142 f., 172. 

Inge (W. R.), 167. 

Inspiration, 51 f., 61 f., 65 f., 67, 
166. 

Intuitionalism, 18. 

‘Interim Ethic,’ 92, 191. 

Islam (see Mohammedanism). 


JaMES (William), 8, 165, 166, 231. 

James (Ep.), 184. 

Jensen, 87. 

Jevons (F. B.), 26, 54. 

Job (Book of), 229. 

Josephus, 86. 

Judaism, 67, 86 f., 89, 102, 132, 187, 
199, 201, 207,211. 

Judgment, 126, M6, 150, 168, 179, 
194, 213, 217 f. 

Justification, 116, 183. 

Justin (Martyr), 4, 9. 


KatrHorr, 84 f. 

Kant, 15, 18, 23, 28, 141, 229. 

Kidd (B.), 8, 29. 

Kingdom (of God), 89 f., 96, 128 f., 
192, 205, 211, 282. 

Koinonia, 154, 159. 


LACTANTIUS, 4. 

Latency (Mental), 166. 

Law, 178, 187. 

Liberty, 56, 99, 118, 149f., 167 f. 

Lodge (Sir Oliver), 165, 231. 

Logia, 101. 

Logos, 111, 157. 

Loisy, 89 f. 

Lord, 112, 155. 

Loscher, 79. 

Lotze, 142. 

Love, 119, 189, 167, 187, 202, 206, 
228. 

Lublinski, 84 f. 

Lucretius, 29. 


239 


Luke, 81. 
Luther, 62, 134. 


Maccutocu (J. A.), 123, 

Macedonius, 155. 

Magic, 26. 

Man, 162 f. 

Mansfield College Essays, 132. 

Materialism, 16, 99, 139, 231. 

Melanchthon, 6. 

Meliorism, 146, 

Mendel, 169. 

Mendicancy, 203 f. 

Messiah, 86, 90, 96, 102, 199, 201, 
214. 

Metaphysics, 94, 100, 102, 107, 136, 
140. 

Mill (J. 8.), 79, 145. 

Minucius Felix, 4. 

Miracle, 51f., 61, 69 f., 96, 106 f., 147, 
203. 

Missions, 222. 

Modernism, 89. 

Mohammedanism, 33, 47, 67, 189, 
206. 

Monism, 16, 189. 

Monolatry, 52. 

Monotheism, 52, 112, 157, 175. 

Montanism, 62. 

‘Moral Therapeutics,’ 74. 

Morality, 26, 29, 100, 115, 122, 174, 
186, 192. 

Motive, 168, 183. 

Miiller (Julius), 170. 

Mysticism, 23, 34, 185, 188. 

Mythology, 25, 32. 


Natural Theology (Paley), 6. 
Naturalism, 16, 64, 141, 144, 230. 
‘Nature,’ 159. 

Nietzsche, 30, 195 f. 

Nutar, 52. 


Octavius, 4. 

Office, 65. 
Omnipotence, 145, 149. 
Omniscience, 145. 
Optimism, 59, 116, 145. 


240 


Orchard (W. E.), 116. 
Origen, 170. 

‘Original Sin,’ 170 f. 

Orr (James), 69. 

‘ Other-worldliness,’ 193 f, 
Otto, 60. 


PAGANISM, 129. 

Paley, 6, 7, 8, 79. 

Panlogism, 19. 

Pantheism, 18 f., 52, 95 f:, 189, 156. 

Papias, 101. 

Paul, 1, 3, 83, 105, 180, 186, 191, 
200, 211. 

Peake (A.), 83, 108. 

Penitence, 123 f., 126, 128, 180, 150, 
168, 172, 179, 180 f. 

‘Penitential Discipline,’ 92, 191. 

Pentecost, 62, 133, 154. 

Perfection, 115, 118, 145, 186. 

‘ Person,’ 158. 

Personality, 19, 116, 189 f., 146, 
157 f., 162 f., 172, 178, 220. 

Personalism, 20, 141. 

Pessimism, 116, 145, 231. 

Pfleiderer, 19. 

Philo, 86. 

Philosophy, 14 f., 17f., 29 f., 80, 
136, 141, 151. 

Pietism, 183. 

Plato, 191. 

Polydaemonism, 32, 

Polytheism, 32, 52, 112, 175, 

Porphyry, 123. 

Positivism, 29, 

Poverty, 203 f. 

Pragmatism, 19, 141, 185. 

Prayer, 26, 

Prediction, 63. 

Pre-existence, 112, 170. 

Primitive (Man), 177. 

Progress, 29, 58, 148, 165, 177, 193, 
205, 225, 230. 

Property, 203. 

Prophecy, 38, 43, 62 f., 68, 91,102, 212, 

Providence, 38, 43, 69, 129. 

Psychology, 20, 22, 94, 139, 162, 
168, 230. 


A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS 


Punishment, 118, 200. 


Q (Quelle), 101. 
Quietism, 188, 


Ramsay (Sir William), 101. 

Ransom, 131. 

Rashdall (H.), 139. 

Redemption, 115, 145, 150. 

Reformation, 6, 138, 224. 

Religion, 13, 21 f., 30, 100, 122, 129, 
141, 166, 172 f., 186. 

Religious-Historical Method, 41 f. 

Remorse, 117, 150, 168, 181. 

Renaissance, 6, 

Repentance (see Penitence). 

Resurrection, 95, 104, 188, 185, 173, 
212, 216 f., 226 f. 

Revelation, 38 ff., 157. 

Revivals, 62, 64, 132, 224. 

Ritschl, 47 f, 129, 176, 182. 

Robertson (G. Croom), 53 f,. 

Robertson (J. M.), 84 f. 

Ryle (Dr. R. J.), 74. 


SACRIFICE, 26, 121 f., 146, 181. 
Saint, 184, 218, 225. 

Salvation, 114 f., 146, 181. 
Sanctification, 116, 156, 183. 
Sanday (William), 104, 108, 166. 
Scepticism, 15, 17, 89, 189, 144. 
Science, 18, 21, 30, 144, 146, 179. 
Schaff, 3 f. 

Schleiermacher, 23. 

Schmiedel, 85. 

Schultz (H.), 124. 

Schweitzer, 89, 

Scott (Ernest), 2, 111. 

‘Second Coming,’ 214 f. 
Secularism, 231. 

Sensationalism, 18. 

Servant (of Jehovah), 128 f., 229, 
Sin, 116 f., 1380, 149, 178 f. 
Sinlessness, 97, 126. 

Smith (W. R.), 42, 68. 
Socialism, 202. 

Society, 151, 160, 207. 

Socrates, 1. 


INDEX 241 


Sonship, 102, 112, 130, 162. Totemism, 33. 
Sophocles, 122. Transcendence, 56, 95, 99, 140, 155. 
Soul, 28. Trinity, 143, 155 f., 158. 
Spencer (Herbert), 16 f., 27, 30, 57, | Tritheism, 158. 

169. Traducianism, 170, 
Spinoza, 31. Troeltsch, 50, 61, 

Spirit (Holy), 65, 154 f., 159, 183, | Truth, 17, 167. 
206. Tyrrell, 89, 

Spirits, 25, 27. 
Starbuck (KE. D.), 164. UNITARIAN, 158. 
Steudel, 84 f. Universalism, 219, 

Subliminal,’ 166. 
Substance, 158. VALUE (Judgments), 47 f, 
Substitution, 124 f. Vicarious, 125, 
Supernatural, 43, 54 f., 95 f., 135, | Vice, 174. 

179. Virgil, 122. 
Supernaturalism, 64, Virgin-birth, 99 f. 
‘Supraliminal,’ 166. Volition, 53 f., 168. 
Synoptics, 100, 108. 

Waltz, 54. 
TALMUD, 67, 86. Wallace (A.), 195. 
Teleology, 19, 38, 165, 231. Ward (J.), 8, 17, 165, 231. 
Temptation, 72, 97. Wealth, 203 f. 
Tennant (F. R.), 178. Weber, 67. 
Tennyson, 228. Weismann, 169. 
Tertullian, 1, 170. Weiss (J.), 89. 
Testament (Old), 39, 67, 102. Wesley, 62. 

(New), 89 f., 67, 77, 155, 183. Westcott, 108, 153, 
Theism, 20, 32, 95, 139. Wrede, 89. 
Theology, 11 f., 188, 174, 178, 183. 

Thompson (J. M.), 81, 94, 104 f. ZEvs, 52. 
Tolstoy, 198 f. Zionism, 86. 


Total Depravity, 170 f., 174. Zoroastrianism, 33. 


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